


Company

by SweetSamOfMine (AudreeJo)



Series: Olivia [14]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Typical Violence, Character Death, Consent Issues, Episode: s09e05 Dog Dean Afternoon, Episode: s09e09 Holy Terror, Episode: s09e10 Road Trip, Eventual Romance, F/M, Female Hunters, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Mild torture, POV Female Character, Romantic Angst, Romantic Friendship, Unresolved Romantic Tension, lightly funny, not dean friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-06 01:58:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 43,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1840129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AudreeJo/pseuds/SweetSamOfMine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a guest staying at the bunker that only Dean knows about, but when it's revealed the kind of guy this guest actually is, a whole slew of new questions and terrors arise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A while back I made a post on Tumblr about the consent issues present in s9, and how would that be if Sam had been dating someone or had met someone while he was unknowingly possessed by Gadreel in early s9. So I started this as a ficlet and it grew a bit, and now I'm thinking about maybe adding to this a little as I explore how the consent issues with Zeke/Gadreel would affect Sam and whoever he may be romantic with at the time.

“No, I can’t get a straight answer from him either,” Liv said as she sat on the edge of Sam’s bed in his room at the bunker. The door was closed and they were speaking a little lower than they probably had to.

Sam rolled his eyes exasperatedly. “Maybe it’s just me.”

Liv scooted closer to him, and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t talk like that, man. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Isn’t there, though?” He rose up off the bed to pace around the room. “Maybe Dean is telling the truth and I’m just losing time because there’s just something wrong with… _me_. And I’m just --I don’t know-- losing my mind.”

Liv sighed. “I know that you with all your self doubt and, let’s face it, self loathing,” --the two of them shrugged at each other-- “are more likely to believe that what’s going on here means there’s something wrong with you, but I am not. I think it makes a lot more sense that Dean did something to get you _better_ that he doesn’t want to tell you about and he’s lying. I mean, look, too much doesn’t add up. And that’s not just because ‘there’s something wrong with you.’ That’s because Dean isn’t telling you everything. Or me.”

“Yeah maybe.” Sam seemed unconvinced.

“Okay, sit down and go through it with me again.” She thumped the mattress signalling for Sam to take a seat next to her. Sam rubbed his face then ran his hands through his hair frustratedly before complying.

 Liv hadn’t been with the Winchesters the night the angels fell. She hadn’t been anywhere near them, but she still saw it happen. And she knew that it had to have something to do with them. They were always closely tied up in angelic politics even when they didn’t want to be. She dropped everything to be with them when she found out Sam was in the hospital (Dean hadn’t been too clear on Sam’s status on the phone), but by the time she arrived, Sam was out, walking around, almost like nothing had happened. Except it was clear something had happened.

Sam had seemed gaunt and rickety, like he could blow over in a light wind. It terrified her but when she addressed this concern with Dean he waved her off. “He’s fine! Stop worrying!” or “He’s just gotta get back in the saddle, you’ll see!” or “He’s been through a lot. He’s just on his way back up,” was basically all he’d respond with. Why Dean didn’t seem concerned with how terrible his brother looked baffled Liv. She had witnessed what the Trials were doing to Sam’s body and she knew Castiel had said explicitly that he could not heal the damage. So what could? And what had?

Soon after their reunion, Liv left the boys to tie up loose ends on the job she had abandoned to be with Sam in the hospital in the first place, so she was sure she ended up missing quite a few tells that may have helped answer some of her questions. And for a while after that, she would flit in and out with the Winchesters like usual, checking in with Sam to make sure he was okay the times she was away. Then one day, Sam was clearly not okay when he answered her casual phone call. The strain showed in his voice and all he could say to her was that he thought something was wrong with him but he just wasn’t sure what. And from that point on Liv stopped taking jobs separate from the Winchesters and shacked up with them in the bunker.

_God knows they have enough spare bedrooms._

She took the one she usually used as a guest bedroom and claimed it officially as her own, and now she made a habit of hanging out with Sam in his room to talk each night before bed.

This was probably the twelfth time in two weeks Sam had gone over the sensation of losing time that he continued to experience as well as recounting the amount of times it had happened to him. He seemed to try a little harder to convince her each time that there was clearly just something wrong with him, and each time Liv tried a little harder to convince him that there were other possible reasons this was happening to him. As Sam finished going through it again, Liv wished she hadn’t ever left him after she saw how he looked just after the hospital. There were so many holes for her to fill in now. She was going to have to confront Dean and force him to tell her the truth.

“I’m just going to ask Dean point blank what he did,” she said flatly as Sam finished reciting his experiences in monotone.

“No, Liv--”

“Yes, I have to--”

“No you really sh--”

“Sam, it’s the only way we’re gonna get any answers and-”

“I don’t want--”

“It will be --”

Suddenly Sam stood abruptly, menacingly looming over her, casting a shadow that almost seemed to fill the entire room. “I said no.” The voice that came from Sam’s mouth was his but at the same time not. And at the sound of it Liv stopped breathing altogether as her eyes widened in horror at the face she knew but didn’t. Every line in Sam’s expression belonged to his body but it was not a Sam expression Liv had ever seen, and from the shadow Sam created, two bright blue lights shined from his eyes.

Liv was in such shock she almost forgot to scream and by the time she remembered to, it was already too late. Sam’s hand that would have never hurt her had it been given the choice found its way over her mouth, muffling any sound she tried to make. He effortlessly dragged her by one arm across the room and pinned her against the wall with one forearm across her chest, just under her throat.

“I understand that you think you are trying to help your friend, but what you are doing is not going to accomplish any good for Sam Winchester.” He spoke in smooth, deliberate syllables, but it didn’t matter. Nothing could calm her. She trembled under his arms. “You must not bring me to Sam’s attention. You must allow me to stay here. It is for his own good. Do you understand?” He did not make a move to uncover her mouth and Liv made more muffled cries. “Do you understand?” he asked again, increasing the pressure against her collar bones. Liv shook her head under his large hand feverishly, tears spilling from her eyes. “Let me be more clear, then. I am not going anywhere. I will stay here with Sam whether you like it or not. I have already gotten Dean to send Castiel away. I know he can’t convince you to leave, but there is another way I believe I can keep you in line.”

Whatever was controlling Sam’s body leaned in, moving his face closer to Liv’s until his breathing blew the hair back away from her face. Another one of Liv’s sob found its way into Sam’s palm. “Sam has numerous memories of your time together. I have access to them all. He holds many of them in the highest regard. You are incredibly important to him, but it doesn’t always have to be that way.”

Liv's eyes widened.  

“I have the power to delete you completely from his memory, Olivia. If you try to separate me from Sam Winchester in any way, all it will take is a second or two to wipe everything you have ever experienced with this man away forever.” He used Sam’s eyes to burrow into Liv. She stared unblinking in terror, unable to look away.

Then Sam’s form backed away from her and she slunk against the wall, shaking.

“Do you understand?” he asked in Sam’s voice, but not his cadence or pitch.

She nodded frantically.

“Now, wipe your face and try to put on a smile. You do not want to tip Sam off that anything unusual has happened.” A grim smile crossed his face briefly as he sat back on the bed where Sam had last seemed like Sam. Liv wiped her face quickly and breathed in a few times, trying to bring her demeanor down, but there was no use. Her heart was racing and she was sure it would never stop. “Come sit where you were, Olivia.”

Liv obeyed, walking cautiously toward the bed, never taking her eyes off of the man that was Sam but wasn’t. She sat slowly next to him, the way she had before he attacked her.

“Good,” he said. Then the slate-faced angel morphed instantly into Sam, the real Sam. The one with the scrunchy forehead crinkle, with a bit of sadness always shining out of his eyes, and hunched shoulders as to not seem so large. Watching this change terrified Liv all over again, but she couldn’t show it.

“...shouldn’t start something with Dean,” Sam said as though he had never left the middle of their conversation before. “I mean, you just got back and we’re all three.. us, again.” He stared at Liv, awaiting a reaction. “You know?”

Liv just stared at him.

“Livvy?”

“Right,” she choked, with a hoarse voice. “It, uh… it wouldn’t be worth it.” She added a weak smile at the end to sell it.

_He’s in there watching me._

“Are you okay?” Sam looked at her through concerned eyes, but Liv kept thinking of the blue glow. Sam reached out to touch her hand but she moved it away quickly, standing up away from the bed. Sam cocked his eyebrow at her.

Remembering herself, Liv tried to recover. “You know,” she started. “Yeah I’m fine. I just, all of a sudden I don’t feel real well.” She grabbed her stomach and shook her head with a laugh. “It’s like… cramps or something.”

Sam eyed her suspiciously, but then his expression soften. “Okay, well. I’m sorry. I hope you feel better.”

“Thanks, I’m just gonna go to bed.”

“Me too, then.”

“G’night.”

“Night, Liv.”

\-----

Liv bursted into the kitchen and as soon as her eyes found Dean she charged him.  “I KNEW you did something to him!” She screamed. Dean was so completely taken by surprise it was easy for Liv to sucker punch him then push him against the counter, pulling out her knife in the process. Her fury and panic was all she could feel. “What was it? What the FUCK did you DO to him??”

“Olivia!” Dean shouted, rearing back away from her blade, struggling to hold her away from him.

“I will fucking KILL you, Dean. _I WILL KILL YOU!”_

“What hap-- _Hey! Hey! Hey!_ \-- What happened?” He actually hopped up to sit on the counter, making it easier for him to anchor himself away from the explosion that was Liv.

Liv looked out of her mind, tears brimming, eyes wide. “He threatened me,” she replied, pointing the knife higher so it would remain close to his neck, but by doing this her center of gravity was off, making her hand less steady. Dean caught and held her wrist at bay. “He grabbed me and threw me against a wall with these blue fucking eyes glowing. And he told me if I tell Sam what’s going on he’ll delete me!”

“He threatened to kill you?!”

She shook her head. “ _Erase_ me. From Sam’s memories.”

“ _What?_ ”

“He said he knew it would be the best way to keep me in line...” Despair rippled across her face. She let the hand holding the knife fall away to her side. What was she actually going to do with that anyways?

Dean sat on the counter staring down at her, stunned.

“I don’t know who that was but he is dangerous! And he’s using Sam’s body and mind -- _he knows things he shouldn’t know-_ \- and you let him in! YOU LET THIS HAPPEN!” As her voice rose once more she let her fist fly, clocking Dean across the jaw again. “How could you!?”

Holding his jaw in pain as he tried to assess the damage, Dean groaned, “Sam was dyin’.” He pulled his hand back to see if there was blood coming from his lip. “The doctors couldn’t fix him, I had to--”

“Don’t give me the ‘I did what I had to do’ bullshit, Dean! Not now! Not after what I just witnessed in there.”

“If he found out there’s an angel patching him up from the inside… he’d expel him, O. He’ll die!”

“And in the mean time, that angel gets to come in and out of Sam’s head, using his body to threaten and throw his friends around, playing with the idea of erasing complete parts of Sam’s life from his memory, and YOU’RE okay with that?”

“No! Of course I’m not!” Dean exclaimed with a look of utter distress. He hopped down from the counter. “Cas said…! Cas told me I could trust this guy.”

“Well you _can’t!_ You have to fix this NOW.”

“I know. I KNOW, alright!”

“ _Dean_ …” she pleaded.

“I _know_. We’ll get him. C’mere.” Seeing how shaken she was, he pulled her into a hug, placing his hand delicately against the back of her head. She leaned her cheek against his chest.

“You know I’m still holding my knife, right?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I know.”

“I’m sorry about your face.”

Liv could feel him chuckle. “I probably deserved it.”

“Oh…!” Liv’s face became even more horrified as she pushed away from Dean. “Oh, oh no!!”

“What!” Dean looked equal parts horrified and confused.

“I… I’ve kissed him!”

“What?”

She turned to look into Dean’s face. “I’ve kissed Sam. Does that mean I also kissed..?”

“No! I mean… Wait, you and Sam?”

Liv rolled her eyes impatiently. “Yah, me and Sam.”

“Again?”

“It’s kind of an on-again, off-again kind of thing.”

“Why didn’t you guys tell me?”

“Are you actually getting on someone _else’s_ case about hiding stuff, right now?”

Dean wilted a bit, “I just mean… had I known I would have worked harder to run interference.”

“Yeah. I’ll remember that, Dean. Next time I’ll be sure to tell you my own personal business so you can more easily orchestrate your disgusting, hostage-holding, consciousness coup!”

Dean wilted a little further. “I was trying to save--”

“What if I had _slept_ with him, Dean!”

Dean’s eyebrows raised so high Liv thought they might jump off his face.

Liv’s hands came up to her cheeks, her eyes wide with horror. “That wouldn’t just be a weird form of rape for me. That’s what this is for Sam, too.”

“Rape?”

“Yes, think about it. I would have slept with Sam" --Dean blanched at the thought-- "but there is no way I’d consent to sleeping with whoever that angel is!” She shuddered. She began feeling sick. “And Sam would never have kissed me if he knew there was someone... _tagging along_. What do you think that’s going to do to him when he finds out? Like he isn’t already concentrated, walking guilt….” The more Liv talked, the paler Dean seemed to get.

_Why had none of this occurred to him before?_

She squared up in front of him. “Dean, we know we can’t trust this guy and soon he’s going to know that I told you what happened,” her voice cracked at the thought, “but there is a window before he realizes you’re onto him. We have to get him out of Sam before he uses Sam’s body to do something really terrible.”

Dean’s hand came up over his mouth as he stared past her. “We have to get that thing outta him. Right now.”

“I’m scared,” Liv said. This drew Dean’s focus back to reality. He looked at her questioningly. “How are we going to do this without tipping off the angel? What if he erases me?”

“I’m not gonna let that happen.”

“What if he’s already done it?”

“O,” Dean hunched to get eye level with her.

"He said it'd only take a few seconds!" There were tears spilling down her face again.

“It’s not gonna happen. Not on my watch.”

She was unconvinced but she nodded.

“We’ll figure this out.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been weeks since Liv discovered the angel and things are about to come unravelled.

“How much longer does this have to go on?” Liv demanded in a harsh whisper.

“I’m handling it,” came Dean with the same tired response she’d heard over and over again.

“Like _hell_!” Liv roared. “It’s been nearly three weeks!”

“O’, this is how it’s gotta be for now until I can get him where I want him. You just--”

“Why is this ‘how it’s gotta be’? Because you say so?”

“That’s right! My house, my brother, my rules!”

“Well, let me remind you that it’s not your head on the chopping block! It’s Sam’s mind he’ll be wrecking, it’s his body he’s using. It’s me he threatened, it’s me he squashed against that wall. Not you, none of that happened to you. But you get to call the shots?” --Liv paused, searching Dean’s face for an answer but Dean just stared back with a frown-- “Glad you’re comfortable with how things are going!”

“Calm _down_. He’ll hear you.”

Liv lowered her voice to sharp growl. “I cannot go on living like a prisoner here. Do you even know what it’s been like for me? I get scared when I look at him too long, and if he reaches for me, I flinch. And he notices and I can see it on his face, Dean. I can’t keep this up! It’s--”

“You have to trust me.”

“You’re the reason this situation exists in the first place!”

“He would have died--!”

Liv cut Dean off. “What if that angel does decide to wipe you from Sam’s mind? Huh, or what if he just decides to wipe _everything_ from his mind? Clean him out, take him over and make him think he just is that angel? What’s to stop him after what he said to me?”

Dean’s expression darkened.

Liv went on with sick irony. “He’d be a pretty great vessel to clear out and take over, big and strong, the face of a Winchester, plus he’d know you’d never try to hurt him because he’s _your Sammy_ \--”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Dean barked.

“Hey, I’m just trying to put it on a level you might actually give a shit about.”

“That ain’t gonna happen.”

“Not on your watch?” --Dean glared at her.-- “Who pressed start on the timer?”

“I’m not gonna _let_ that happen!”

Liv shook her head, disgust written all over her face. “Why is it that you only get disturbed by what is going on here when I relate it directly to how it could affect _you_?” Liv stood as close as she could without touching him, glaring up into his face. Dean could no longer look her in the eyes.

“Uhh? Am I interrupting something?” Sam walked through the threshold of the library slowly, as though he may have been lingering just outside for a time. Both Liv and Dean jumped with a start, eyes darting around to find Sam’s figure. What Dean was searching for, Liv had no idea, but she knew she was looking for a furrowed brow and hunched shoulders. The angel could pretend to be Sam, sure, but could he get it just right? _Oh God, I hope not_. Terror washed over her like someone had thrown a bucket of ice water on her.

Liv glowered to cover her racing heart and being caught off guard. “No, nothing,” she responded, taking a few strides toward Sam and trying to sound angry, not frightened and desperate. “Your brother’s just being an asshole, as usual.” She turned back to Dean. He knew she meant it.

“It seemed like the two of you were discussing something of great importance,” came the smooth, deliberate cadence of the angel. The dread Liv felt broke through her to her face as she snapped back around to stare in horror. She clapped her hand over her mouth to muffle a cry. She backed away behind Dean.

_This is it! He’s going to do it. He’s going to do it. It’s over, it’s over, it’s over, it’s over..._

Dean was quick. Quicker than Liv gave him credit for. “Woa, dude, you showing yourself in front of Liv?” He pointed between the angel and Liv with pretty well-acted surprise.

The angel’s eyes flickered from Dean’s face to Liv’s, trying to decide what to make of this situation. “I felt it best to reveal myself while the two of you were together since I can see she will be staying here. I thought it might surprise her less to know that you also know I’m here and that I am trying to help.” The angel’s eyes burrowed into Liv as he spoke. Liv hated how he used Sam’s voice, how he twisted it and wielded it to terrify and manipulate her. And she hated how he used Sam’s eyes to make her flinch away from his gaze. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end and her stomach twist into knots.

Dean nodded as if to agree, “Liv,” he said turning back to her with pleading eyes. “This is Zeke. He’s helping Sammy get back on his feet--”

“And it is important that this stay between just the three of us until Sam Winchester is strong enough on his own.” The angel’s eyes never left her face. Liv had to play along. If she let the angel know that she had told Dean about the threat, there was nothing stopping him from damaging Sam’s mind. She took her hands off her mouth and wiped her eyes.

“Sure,” she croaked, nodding. “I want-- Sam needs to heal.”

“Yeah, Liv and I were just arguing about Castiel when you walked in,” Dean started with a laugh. “But now that she knows you’re here I can explain why he can’t be around right now. Don’t want the two of you gettin’ your angel mojo crossed.” Dean patted her on the back, light-heartedly. He was so good at lying it actually made her really uncomfortable. But as she was being held hostage for Sam’s brain, she sighed and let a weak smile appear across her face.

“That makes a lot more sense now.” Liv knew the angel didn’t buy it from her. But he didn’t have to. Dean just had to sell to the angel that he believed Liv and make sure Zeke thought Liv was still the only one who knew he was not a friendly angel. If Zeke thought Dean was as dumb as Liv thought Dean was half the time, it wouldn’t be a hard sell.

The angel nodded and then he was gone, morphing seamlessly back into what Sam should always be. Emotion struck Liv like she was seeing Sam after he had returned from some dangerous mission she wasn’t sure he’d make it through, but it was tied up in her fear and disgust, too. Sam’s confused look traveled from Dean to Liv’s face. “You guys okay, then?”

“I can’t--” her voice caught in her throat-- “I have to leave.” She kept her eyes on the floor and trudged directly past Sam, towards the hallway behind him, with every intent of going to her room, packing her stuff, and getting out of the bunker. There was no way she could keep up this charade if she stayed. She could barely look Sam in the face anymore and he could tell. She shuddered away from his touch, even though she didn’t want to. There was no telling what he actually thought was going on, but after what had just happened Liv knew Sam’s mind was at risk as long as she was there. She couldn’t pretend like Dean, she couldn’t stifle the terror she felt about Zeke. She had thought of going 20 times in the last 3 weeks and had only stayed because she thought being near Sam would somehow help, but it was clear to her now that she was doing no good here. She heard both boys call her name, but she didn’t turn back. She couldn’t face Sam again.

“What was _that_?” Sam’s question rang with accusation.

Dean answered as flippantly as he could, “I don’t know, man! Hormones?” He watched Sam throw him a bitchface before turning to follow Liv down the hall. At this point, sadly Sam was used to Liv exiting the room not long after he entered, but there was more going on here. As soon as Sam was gone, Dean brought his hand up to his face, rubbing at his eyes. This was a mess and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could juggling it all. And Liv leaving wasn’t going to help. Or was it? He didn’t know anymore.

Sam easily caught up to Liv before she reached her room. “Hey,” he said softly. Liv tried hard not to react startled, but she recoiled from him anyways. “What do you mean you have to leave?”

She didn’t stop walking, she didn’t turn to look at him. “I need to go,” she managed. “I need a break. I can’t stay here anymore.”

“Okay,” Sam replied like he had been punched in the chest. “But slow down, can you talk to me?” He reached for her hand and tugged at it a little to get her to stop and hopefully turn around. Instead she jerked her hand out of his and kept moving.

Sam hesitated, wounded. She might as well have turned and pushed him away with all her strength. He followed at a distance the rest of the way. “What happened in there with Dean?”

She reached her door and threw it open, retreating to the other side of the bed to put some space between her and Sam. She knew he wouldn’t come too far in without more of an invitation and she didn’t want him to see the tears stinging the sides of her eyes. “Nothing,” she said, but she knew he was unconvinced. And she was shaking. _God, this is why I have to leave. I cannot lie to Sam._ “I just miss being out on the road. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen some of my old contacts and done some of my own cases.”

Sam looked hurt and disappointed but he nodded like he understood. She knew what it meant. She had told him she was glad to be back and that the bunker finally kind of felt like home, but now she changed her mind. She had only been living there for about two months, so missing old contacts wasn’t going to convince him. What he saw was she no longer wanted to be around him and it hurt him, and it was easy for him to believe because he never thought anyone could ever actually prefer him to anything else. His face was hurt and disappointed --but not surprised-- and that was the worst part.

Liv felt sick for all new reasons. This was the opposite of why she had moved into the bunker. She never wanted to reinforce the shitty perception Sam had of himself. She just wanted to be a shield, and somehow Dean had fucked up her ability to even do that.

“Liv, look,” Sam started. “I know things have been weird lately, maybe we rushed back into things?” -- _Oh Sam_ \-- “You hardly look me in the face anymore, you shrug me off when I touch you… I don’t know what I did but” --Sam’s head ducked a little to try to get her to make eye contact with him without seeming pushy-- “we --this, you and me-- doesn’t have to be anything you don’t want it to be.”

Liv took a deep breath and returned his gaze. His eyes were his even though she knew someone else was probably staring out from them as well, but she tried to forget that for Sam’s sake. He needed her to look at him.

“We can just be friends. That’s fine. I don’t want you to feel any obligation--”

“Sam,” she was shaking her head. “No, you’ve got it all wrong, I--” There was no way to explain herself. She crossed the room to be close to him. It was the first time since Zeke threatened her that she had come toward Sam. He straightened up like just seeing her do that much was a relief in itself, but he was careful not to move towards her at all just in case. She reached out a hand to his chest. She could feel his heart beat, steady and strong and his. He made no move to touch her. “Nothing has changed,” she whispered. She brought her hand up to his face and his eyes closed at her touch, and for a second she was able to forget that there was someone else there, hiding out. She brought her other hand up and pulled him down to rest his forehead on hers. Sam kept his arms at his sides, making Liv feel even worse because this lie had even caused Sam to walk on eggshells, though he had no idea why.

_Nothing is fair. Nothing is okay._

She nuzzled at him and kissed his face softly a few times before pulling back for a second. Glassy Sam eyes stared back at her.

_I can’t let him kiss me back._

So she buried her head in his chest, feeling Sam’s arms finally come up and wrap around her, locking her against him. She felt him heave a sigh.

“I overreacted,” she muttered. “Dean and I just keep getting at each other and I just-- I’m sorry.”

Sam leaned his cheek on her head while she stayed encased in their hug. “Don’t apologize. I know he’s a lot to deal with. You guys have never had to be around each other this much before.”

She nodded against his chest.

“But if you need time, go. Don’t stay just for me--” He stopped when he felt her shake her head no.

“I’m sorry,” she said. weakly.

“For what?”

“I just--” she caught her voice before it cracked. “I just am.”

“Don’t be.” He smooth her hair down behind her ear, still cradling her against him.

A knock came at the door and Dean nudged the door open a little bit to peer in. Liv and Sam stepped apart a bit to see him, though Sam kept his arms around her. Dean looked them up and down, a bit caught off guard at the sight, then said, “Hey O, can I talk to you?”

Liv nodded and with a glance up at Sam, then followed Dean out into the hall. Sam came too, but with a knowing look, turned the opposite way towards his own room. Maybe he thought this was an opportunity for Liv and Dean to talk out their differences.

_If only it could be that easy._

“You can’t go.”

“Why? Because you say so?”

Dean closed his eyes and took in a deep breath as if to keep himself from exploding again. “No,” he replied shortly. “I need you here.”

“The only way I’m staying is if we fix this. Now.”

Dean nodded pointedly.

“I can’t lie to him.”

Dean continued to nod.

“He thinks everything going on right now is _his_ fault.”

Dean stopped nodding and glared at her. She returned the look.

“He thinks losing time means he’s going crazy, he thinks the way I’ve been weird around him is because he’s done something to make me love him less, he’s pretty sure he’ll never be normal again because, and I quote ‘that’s just how I am’--”

“ _Alright_ , alright, I _get_ it!”

“Do you?”

“Yes!” Dean spat. “I don’t need you to...outline everything he thinks is wrong with him!”

“What Sam thinks _should_ make you uncomfortable. It’s _your_ fault. I’m being held hostage, Sam’s walking on eggshells and doesn’t even understand why, while you act like nothing’s even wrong. Or maybe you really don’t noticed how fucked this is as long as things are done on your timetable--”

“I said I _agree_ with you,” he bit at her, resentfully. “We’ll fix it. I’ll call in Cas. We’ll get Sam back and just pray he doesn’t keel over dead without what’s-his-wings in there.”

Live was pretty sure that bit about Sam possibly keeling over was meant to guilt her, but she didn’t care. She knew Sam would never be alright with what was going on. “Okay,” she replied, relief in every syllable. “Let’s do it.”

Just then, they heard Sam’s door click open and turned to see him emerge, down the hall. His eyes glowed blue. His hand came up and both Liv and Dean were blown back, hitting the wall and falling to the ground, unconscious.

When they came-to, he was nowhere to be found in the Bunker.

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The consequences of allowing in the strange angel have become unavoidable. As everything starts to unravel, it's clear this situation is no longer in Dean's control.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entire chapter is basically from Kevin's point of view. I felt like I have kind of overlooked him in my writing and I had a lot of Kevin feels to work through, so I decided to give him this entire chunk. 
> 
> It's strong enough on its own that it could almost work as its own stand-alone Kevin Tran short fic, even though it furthers the overall plot of Company. I hope you enjoy chapter 3. :)

The angel was gone and that meant so was Sam. 

Liv came to with a sharp pain in her shoulder from the force of being thrown against the wall. With every jolt from Dean shaking her awake, it smarted.

“Hey! Hey! C’mon! Wake up!” she heard in a frantic, gruff voice.

Dean was leaning over her on the floor, propping her up with one arm while his other hand patted her cheek, trying to bring her back to consciousness. She jolted with a gasp as reality set back in. Dean pulled her to a sitting position.

“You okay?” he asked, waiting for a response that would let him know she was in her right mind, that she remembered what had just happened, that she wasn’t concussed or rendered completely useless to him.

She pushed him away with probably too much force, causing him to stumble back a bit. She shook her head to clear it, trying to keep the panic bubbling just under her skin down. She moved her arm up and down and around to try to work the pain out.

“Are you hurt?”

“Guys?” Kevin poked his head out of his room down the hall from where they had landed. “What the _fuck_ just happened?”

 

\----------------

In the beginning, the Winchesters weren’t really very emotionally supportive of Kevin Tran. Not even Sam, who _would_ pause to ask Kevin how he was feeling about everything from time to time, but didn’t have many opportunities to do so. The guy was more and more dead-on-his-feet the closer he got to finishing the Trials, anyways. And Dean wasn’t really into talking about _feelings_ … unless they were _his_... and even then, he had to not realize that was what he was actually discussing in order to do it, so...  

It had never really been enough. Kevin knew the boys were on a mission to shut the Gates of Hell. For fuck’s sake, he had been on the same mission and it’s what he had spent every waking moment on. Kevin _got_ it. It’s what had uprooted, changed, and ultimately had ruined his life. But that didn’t mean a little company wouldn’t have helped possibly ground him a bit more through it all. Ending up only feeling safe when locked in a closet with warding symbols  and sigils painted on every wall was not how he had wanted to spend his time.

He went from that dank closet that ended up being his only comfort on that tin-can of a boat to the massive bunker, which he had felt more at ease in until the lockdown. The night the angels fell the bunker had turned into a terrifying monster consuming him in a roar of bright, flashing lights and loud buzzers and alarms. And he had been there alone.

He was always alone.

There was no way to know what was going on on the outside and this most definitely did _not_ help with the anxiety he acquired while living on the boat. What helped even less was seeing Dean drag the King of Hell through the bunker a few days later, right by him --Kevin-- one of the many victims of Crowley’s torture.

Dean had tried to calm Kevin down, explaining that Crowley was necessary and Dean probably went off on one of his “in this life” speeches about how “you gotta do what you gotta do” _yadda yadda_. Kevin had tuned it out, like he usually did, as the bile in his stomach was raising up into his throat at having to be near the creature who killed his mother, who took his finger, who tortured him for information, and now he was having to hear how he was just supposed to be okay with being around him. Because Dean said so. When Kevin had tuned back into the end of Dean’s speech he wasn’t shocked to find Dean asking him for a favor. He needed a spell? A new sigil? Something from the angel tablet, like always?

There was always a reason to calm Kevin down, but it was never concern. He was useful but not much else. And the worst part about it is this was all he had, so of course he’d check the tablet for the spell, and of course he’d stay in the same compound where his mother’s murderer, his torturing, was being harbored, and he’d do it without much complaint and without verbalizing just how fucked up he thought the whole situation was. Because it would change nothing. He’d still be a scribe of God, he’d still be the one that the demons, the angels, and the Winchesters all looked to to decode the tablet, he’d still be in the exact same position no matter what. Why fight it? Dean may not value him as a person beyond how useful he was at the time, but Dean treats him _like_ a person. Kevin was certain the other choices wouldn’t show him even that much respect.

Then there was Liv, who Kevin had only met a few times in person. When the Winchesters were MIA for a year, he heard from her on occasion when she could find a way to check in on him, but she never came around for fear that she might lead demons to him. He hadn’t really gotten to know her very well except through pieces of dialogue he had picked up from Sam and Dean when they talked about her or directly to her on the phone in front of him. From what Kevin could gather, she was someone important to the boys, though she had a pretty strong personality that tended to clash with Dean’s because she was always arguing with him. Kevin recalled one time, when Dean dropped by the boat to ask Kevin about the Tablet and deliver groceries, that he talked to and hung up on Liv on three different cell phones within the hour he was there. Kevin had decided, then, that he would probably like her if he ever actually got the chance to spend time with her.

Liv barrelled into the bunker a few days after the angels fell with five pieces of luggage in her arms and panic in her eyes. Even though they were expecting her, the abrupt state of her arrival caught Dean and Kevin off guard, causing them to stare awkwardly at her.

 _“Where is he?”_ she had demanded impatiently before she even said hello, and Kevin and Dean both wordlessly pointed towards the hallway that lead to Sam’s room. Liv had dropped every bag right there on the floor and marched away without saying another thing to either of them.  

The first few days Liv was settling into the bunker Kevin had almost been invisible to her, but it seemed like pretty much everything was invisible to her except Sam, who she had raced across the country to be with after hearing he was in a coma. But she had driven to the bunker, not a hospital, and Kevin could tell by the scrutiny she shot at Dean over and over again that the panic in her eyes wasn’t completely just about Sam’s condition but about how exactly he had overcome it so quickly. And Kevin couldn’t blame her for that. He wasn’t really sure what had happened there either, but he had been too wrapped in a haze of his own anxiety, fear, obsession, grief, and varying degrees of drunkenness to be too concerned.

Kevin had learned early on that one of the best ways to deal with being “in this life” was to drink and drink often. That was one thing he had picked up from Dean without Dean having to give him a speech about it, and there was always some form of liquor somewhere near by if he was in a place Dean would frequent. Dean kept the fridge on the boat stocked and they were never without some form of scotch or whiskey or beer at the bunker. But then there came a time when alcohol no longer took the sting of fear away, and panic started to set in night after night. After a weekend away in Branson per Dean’s suggestion --he said he thought it may give the kid a break from it all-- Kevin returned to the bunker with one of the worst hangovers he’d ever experienced. Apparently drinking everything in the mini-fridge _does_ dull the fear, but _only_ if you drink it _all_. And Kevin paid for it for the next few days.

That hangover was when he really got to know Liv. He could barely lift his head off the table in the library and he had fallen asleep with his hand grasped around a bottle full of ice-water that he held against his forehead.

“How’s he doing?” he overhead Sam whisper. He wasn’t even sure who Sam was talking to.

“He looks terrible,” he heard a concerned Liv reply in a low voice. Kevin barely opened his eyes to see who was staring at him. Just Sam and Liv stood in the doorway, appraising Kevin’s status with their arms crossed. Dean must have been upstairs packing for the road. Kevin closed his eyes right back as soon as he made out the two blurry figures. Even the soft light of the library made his brain feel like it had been slammed with multiple blocks of wood.

“Do you think he’ll be okay here alone?” Sam asked. It was clear he didn’t want to leave Kevin alone, but it was even more clear that Sam wanted to go on this hunt with Dean. He had been determined to prove to Dean that he wasn’t the delicate flower Dean kept treating him like and he had even been the one to find this case.

“Honestly,” Liv began with a sigh. “No, I don’t think he’ll be okay. I mean, look at him. He can’t even move his head without groaning.” --Hearing this had made Kevin try to move his head to test if she was right. She was. Kevin let an anguished whimper go as soon as he shifted in any direction.-- “See,” she gestured her hand towards Kevin, and lowered her voice back down. “And soon he’ll probably start puking.”

Kevin could imagine the rumpled face Sam made in response to that.

“What should we do?” he muttered.

Liv rolled her eyes and nudged Sam in the side with her elbow. “Well, you just said it. I think it’s pretty clear one of us needs to stay with him.” There was a loaded pause and Kevin tried to squint his eyes open again to see them. Which one would be stuck having to stay with the sick kid, the burden, the guy that was only worth any trouble when he could do something for them. Or would they just leave him to figure out how to crawl from this table to the bathroom without puking on the floor by himself since he wasn’t much use in this state?

He saw Liv turn to Sam and grab his hand, tugging his attention away from the sad display of Kevin drooling on the table to her face. “Look, I know you don’t want to miss a case because Dean keeps fussing over you --or _whatever_ \-- and it makes you feel like he doesn’t think you can handle--”

“--Liv--”

“--but maybe this is an opportunity for you to actually stay home and rest without--”

“I don’t _need_ rest!” Sam said firmly.

Liv stared up at him for a second before nodding. “Okay,” she said. And she was sincere. She grabbed the collar of his shirt and tug him gently so she could kiss his face. He brought his shoulders down, closing his eyes as her lips brushed his cheek. “Okay,” she whispered against his bristly face. Then she pulled away to look into his eyes. “I’ll stay with him. You go with Dean.”

“Are you sure?” He was grateful, and not just for her offer to stay. It had been a while since he’d gotten a vote of confidence in any form. But he said he was fine and she asked no questions, so...

“Yeah!” Liv insisted. “I mean, I’ve taken care of hungover friends before, and Kevin’s a sweet guy. It’ll give us a chance to bond or something.” She shrugged.

“Thank you,” Sam said against her forehead as he pulled her in for a hug. He kissed the top of her head.

“Gerrrrtt a rmmm….” Kevin gurgled. Sam and Liv turned abruptly in surprise. Kevin’s partly open eyes rolled at them. They quickly broke apart, awkwardly.

“Well at least we know he’s cognizant to some degree.”

“Yup.” Sam patted Liv on the back. “Good luck!”

She rolled her eyes with a smile. “Get the fuck out.”

A few hours later Kevin woke up completely disoriented in one of the squishy chairs near one of the bookshelves in the library with a horrendous headache. His stomach was churning--

_Oh God..._

\--and he was startled to find something restricting his arms--

_What the fu-- er...a blanket?_

\--so he leaned forward only to feel something else fall against his shoulder--

_Uh, whose…. pillow?_

Liv, who was at her laptop at the table just a few feet away with only one earbud in so she would know when Kevin needed anything, heard him stir and start grumbling. She lept up with a sympathetic grin. The poor kid looked absolutely terrible and she was fairly certain he didn’t even know his own name, let alone where he was.

She stepped over to him quickly, catching the pillow as it fell from the chair completely. Kevin leaned over his knees with his hands on his forehead, moaning pathetically. She knelt beside him and placed her hand on his back.

“What do you need, Kev?”

“Uh dunno…”

“What hurts most? What’s the most pressing issue?”

Kevin shook his head, then groaned because he shook his head.

“Okay, bud, well here have this” --she placed a trashcan lined with a few plastic bags in in front of his knees-- “and I’m going to set this here” --she sat a large water bottle next to his chair-- “and you just stay put. Now that you’re awake, I’m going to go make you something to eat and I’ll bring you some coffee.” Kevin grimaced at the mention of food and nearly started retching into the trash can right then. “I _know_ ,” she cooed at him, rubbing his back, soothingly. “Food sounds awful, but you will feel a bit better with some greasy food in your belly.” She picked up the water bottle and made his hand take it. “Drink water. Coffee is coming. If you need anything” --she placed his cell phone on the bookshelf behind the chair, far enough away from him that if he vomited unexpectedly there would be no danger of splash-zone damage-- “I’ll just be around the corner in the kitchen, but you can text me. I figure calling out is out of the question at least until your headache is less intense.” She shook her cell in front of Kevin’s face so he saw it. “It’s loud and on vibrate. I won’t ignore it. Okay?”

He looked up for a second at her and then nodded. “Thanks,” he croaked in a voice much lower than his usual one, then he doubled back over the trashcan. Liv stuffed his pillow back behind him then made for the kitchen.

He watched her throw one of her earbuds back into her ear and plug it into her phone, which she crammed in her back pocket. She hummed while she fired up the stove and he saw her through the doorway kind of dance back and forth from one end of the kitchen to the other as she worked. It wasn’t long before she brought him a big cup of coffee, which she sat on the tiny side table next to his chair for him to reach when he was ready. Kevin eventually felt okay enough to lean back against the pillow and away from the trashcan. The coffee was really good, but it didn’t make his headache go away and he was pretty sure he was going to throw it up later.

“Alright, kiddo,” Liv announced upon returning with the food on a ‘50s-style TV tray. “Get ready for the greasiest meal I could throw together with what was available to me on such short notice without the chance to go to the store: bacon, fried eggs, hash browns --which may or may not have had freezer burn, I’m not actually sure-- and a big bagel with honey. A balanced hangover breakfast, complete with a 2-pill pain-reliever garnish.” Instead of bringing the food to Kevin, she sat the tray on the table across the library. “I really think you should eat first, before you take the pills because they could make you feel more nauseous on an empty stomach, but it’s up to you. Oh, and my grandpa always told me that honey was the most helpful remedy for him when he had a hangover, so...that’s why I put honey on the bagel instead of cream cheese. And also, we were out of cream cheese.”

Kevin brought the coffee back up to his mouth and drank from the mug without leaning forward away from his pillow, so a little fell out the side of his mouth. “I think I want the meds first.”

“Sure thing.” She grabbed the pills and delivered them into Kevin’s weak hand as she took the coffee from him, replacing the water bottle there instead.

“Thanks.”

“Just let me know when you want to eat. You really will feel better.”

Liv returned to her place in front of her laptop at the end of the table a few feet away from Kevin and watched him a bit. He sat with his eyes closed and sipped the coffee, trying to block the light of the room out. When the cup was empty, he sat it aside, next to his water bottle, and went back to sleep for about an hour

Then his cell phone rang. Liv jumped up with a start and raced to the bookshelf to silence it but it was too late. Kevin had been woken out of a pretty deep sleep with a start. He immediately grabbed his head in pain from the jolt, then fell to the trashcan.

Liv was irritated to see it was Dean calling. “What!”

_“Well hello to you, too, sweetheart.”_

“Why are you calling his phone? You know he’s sick!”

_“We need him to double check something for us.”_

“Dean, he can’t double check anything, he can’t even stand up without getting dizzy”

“Uhh,” Kevin said into the trashcan. “I actchully haven’t tried stanning yut so…”

Liv cocked an eyebrow at Kevin and his sleepy, slurred words and put a finger to her amused grin to shush him.

_“C’mon, O, can’t you just ask ‘em?”_

“No, I’m not going to ask him to do anything. He probably would throw up on the books and then where would we be?”

_“Gross!”_

“Tell me what you need and I’ll see if I can go through his notes for you. Or I can look through the library or whatever.”

_“Alright we’re in Enid, Oklahoma--”_

“That sounds bleak.”

_“Yeah it sucks-- And there have been all these mysterious deaths and the only eyewitness is a dog.”_

“Oh...kay?”

_“You think you can find a spell that could help us talk to Fido?”_

“Um, I’ll see what I can do.”

_“Okay. Hurry.”_

“Don’t call his phone again. Call mine.”

_“Yeah, yeah.”_

“I mean it. I’m turning his off.”

_“Alright, I got it! Just get me the spell.”_

“This is no way to get what you want. You’re too mean. You really should have had Sam call.”

Liv was pretty sure she could actually hear Dean’s eyes roll before he hung up on her. She laughed to herself as she set Kevin’s phone on the table.

“You really like giving him a hard time, huh?” Kevin said from the floor. He had slid completely out of his chair and was basically clinging to the trashcan with his arms and his legs.

“Yeah I guess so,” she replied, leaning against the long table. “Dean gives everyone a hard time for the most part. Someone should give it back.”

Kevin nodded in agreement and chuckled gingerly, trying not to overdo it and hurt his head again. He leaned his forehead on the side of the can. “How did I get to this chair? Wasn’t I ...Was I at the table earlier?”

“Yeah, before the boys left you were there. But I thought you’d like the comfortable chair better so I moved you.”

Kevin lifted his head off the trash. “You _moved_ me?”

“You don’t remember? Geez, Kev, you must have still been drunk!”

He shrugged.

“I didn't, like, pick you up or anything," she giggled. "I just kind of hoisted you up on your own feet and braced your weight against my shoulder, then walked you to this chair. You were not happy about it. You were really whiny, actually.”

“Sorry.”

Liv laughed. “I definitely don’t blame you. Not with the kind of headache you must have had. So, how are you feeling now? You’ve got coffee, painkillers, a little water, and a bit more sleep in your system. You up for trying to eat?”

Kevin was surprised to find, now that his body had settled from being jerked out of sleep by the phone call, that at the mention of food his stomach actually did feel a little hungry. In fact, he kind of felt ravenous. “Yeah, I think so.”

Liv stood to help Kevin up off the floor. He was surprised by how disoriented he still was, and even with Liv holding onto his arm, he wobbled on his feet. He found that standing actually did make him a little dizzy. Liv lead him to the table to sit across from where she had been set up with her laptop and brought the tray of food over to him. She also grabbed Kevin’s phone, which she had not shut off, and the water bottle and set them at the table for him, too.

“Thanks,” he said timidly. His cheeks were flushed. “You know you don’t have to do all this.”

“Kev, I just held your hand to walk you about five steps across the room. I think I do have to--”

“No, I mean --like-- it’s just really nice of you.”

“It’s no big deal,” she assured him with a smile, then took her seat across from him and started tapping away at her laptop.

Kevin rolled his eyes, then turned to his food and dug in.

“What’s that face about?” Liv demanded, snatching a piece of Kevin’s bacon from his plate and taking a bite.

“I dunno, I just…”

“What?” She raised her eyebrows.

“It’s just --maybe I’m cynical-- I’ve heard that phrase a lot.”

“What are you talking about?”

Kevin appraised Liv in between bites of his bagel. He hadn’t meant to roll his eyes, it was just a reaction by now. And she had done a pretty thorough job of taking care of him without seeming like it was annoying to her, so there was no reason for him to make a face. And explaining himself would mean opening up to someone… which was something he hadn’t done in a long time. And it was especially not something he had been asked to in a long time.

“I guess,” he began, but then stopped himself. He took another swig of coffee and continued with a sigh. “For the last two years I’ve felt like a burden but like I don’t matter at the same time, if that’s even possible. Like, I dunno, I have to be taken care of and protected because I’m a motherfucking prophet, but at the same time I get the feeling everyone’s lives would be easier if they didn’t have to deal with me. Any time I ask for something, Dean responds with ‘sure no big deal,’ but he still seems put out. Then if he asks me to do something, like with the tablet, he always starts out with ‘It’s no big deal but--’ Either way that phrase is used it’s untrue.” He agitatedly started in on his eggs. They were cold, but they were still good. “I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t really like the phrase no matter how it’s used.”

“Noted.” Liv blinked at him, surprised by that unexpected explanation. “But to clarify,” she scooted her laptop aside so there was nothing between her and Kevin, and crossed her arms on  the table, “I like taking care of people. It’s one of the things I like about doing this job. Killing monsters still freaks me out a little. I mean, I have an ethical quandary about every fifth case about whether or not I’m doing the right thing, but taking care of victims, making them feel safe again, that’s what it’s about. To me, at least. So this,” --she pointed around the room, to the chair with the blanket and pillow, to the trashcan with the multiple sacks in it, to the plate of food that was nearly empty now, and to Kevin himself, his black hair standing on end like she imagined Harry Potter’s might do on a regular day-- “taking care of a banged-up friend after a night of too much drinking? This is nothing. It’s _no big deal._ Sincerely, I’m happy to do it.”

“It’s stupid.. about not liking that phrase. It’s picky. I’m just in such a bad mood half the time, I guess it makes me more….more--”

“Cantankerous?”

“Good word.”

“Thanks.”

“Am I really--?”

Liv shook her head. “No, Kevin. I don’t think you’re cantankerous. I think you’ve been handed a shitty situation you didn’t ask for.”

Kevin tapped his fork on the tray absent-mindedly. “Who here actually asked for any of this, though?”

He had her there. She shrugged and shook her head.

Kevin poked at the hashbrowns. They looked good but the comment about the freezer burn scared him. “I just wish I could stop feeling so damn scared all the time.”

Liv leaned her head on her hand. “Is that how you ended up with this hangover?”

He smiled over the second cup of coffee he was about to finish off. “Yeah, unfortunately.”

She tried not to look at him with pity in her face, but she couldn’t help it. He didn’t deserve this. But the look she gave him didn’t upset him or make him feel small like it might do to one of the Winchesters. Instead, it felt good to have someone feel bad for him. He wasn’t going to hear a speech from her about stowing his crap or about how, in this life bad things happen, and you have to just roll with it. She didn’t seem to see things that way. And he was thankful.

“It might not mean much,” Liv said, “because you can’t just make fear go away with facts and logic, but you live in basically a paranormal-bomb-shelter with Sam and Dean, and while they may not be the best at expressing their feelings” --They shot each other melodramatic looks-- “I know they count you as family. And if you know anything about the Winchesters, there is nothing more important.”

“Dean told me that.”

“Don’t you believe him?”

Kevin nodded, lightly. “I want to,” he said, quietly. “I want to believe I’m worth more to them than just what I can do for them.”

Liv’s brows knitted together as she leaned forward on the table, her hand stretched toward him. Kevin met her gaze. “You are,” she insisted.

Kevin’s eyes faltered a bit, but then he nodded in response like he really believed her. “So, when Dean called,” Kevin began with a wry smile, “what did he want me to do?”

Liv facepalmed. Kevin laughed.

A few hours later, Kevin felt good enough to go take a shower. Liv had suggested, whenever he could finally stand without getting dizzy, and when he went at least an hour without feeling like touching the trashcan just to be safe, that he take a long, steamy shower because it could help him to sweat out any toxins still in his system. She would have suggested he do it earlier but the dizzy spells were problematic, and while Liv liked Kevin a lot, she wasn’t close enough to him to be prepared to help him up out of the shower, and Kevin agreed.

When he returned to the library, he felt almost like a different person. Fresh clothes, fresh face, and only a bit of a headache right at the top of his head.

“There’s the Kevin I know!”

“I do feel a lot better.”

“You look it.”

“Did you find anything that would help Sam and Dean?”

Liv turned her laptop and two books around to face Kevin’s side of the table. She pointed at each as she described them. “This one --it’s of Native American origin, I think-- deals with binding you with your spirit animal, allowing you to communicate with that type of creature if you can transcend… You know,” Liv snorted. “Come to think of it, I don’t think that one really fits this case, but it was the first one I came to that almost sounded right.” She moved to the next. “This one here, it’s an Inuit spell that let’s you read animal’s minds, but whatever animal you use it on, you could possibly take on traits of that animal.” The two shrugged at one another. “And the last one is in this book, it says you become ‘one with nature and all living things.’”

“Well that’s vague.”

“I thought so, too.”

“So probably we should go with the second one.”

“I won’t argue with a Prophet of the Lord.”

Just then, Kevin’s phone began to ring. “It’s Sam and Dean.”

“Those jackasses. I told them not to call you.”

“I _am_ feeling better.”

“Yeah but _they_ don’t know that.”

“You wanna answer?” Kevin handed her the phone with a grin.

She winked at him as she pulled the phone to her ear. “I told you not to call Kevin!”

Dean’s voice was on the other side. _“I knew you were bluffing about turning off his phone.”_

“I knew you were lying about promising not to call it.”

_“It’s been like five hours. Ya got something for me?”_

“I don’t know. You want to ask nicely?” She laughed silently at Kevin as she heard Dean pass the phone to Sam.

_“Hello?”_

“Hey, Sam.”

Kevin stifled guffawed.

_“Uh, did you need to talk to me? Dean just handed me the phone without really--”_

“No, he’s mad because I told him to ask nicely for the spell.”

_“Ah. So how’s Kevin?”_

“Hanging in there. He was finally able to step away from the trashcan for good about an hour ago.”

_“Awesome. Little victories.”_

Liv waited.

_“You want me to ask nicely for the spell, don’t you?”_

After Liv explained the spell plus the side-effects to Sam, and after they both decided it would be best and probably most hilarious if Dean was the one the spell was cast on, she hung up and passed Kevin’s phone back to him. Her smile lingered as she settled back into her chair across from Kevin.

“So,” Kevin began. “You and Sam?”

Liv raised her eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“That’s cool.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s just… he seems like a hard guy to know.”

“Yeah.”

“Is that all you’re gonna say?” He laughed.

Liv hesitated. “Yeah?”

“Okay that’s cool. You don’t have to talk about it.” Kevin put on an exaggerated pouty face. “I just thought we were, you know, bonding or whatever.”

“Don’t-- don’t do that.” Liv shook her head, waving her hand playfully at him as if to shoo a fly. She sighed. “I think he’s just cautious about what he puts out there.”

“I mean, I don’t blame him.” Kevin’s tone switched back to serious. “In his line of work, it’s probably for the best to wear armor, so to speak.”

“Definitely.”

“But I guess you broke in.”

“I don’t think I broke in. He just... drops the shield for me.”

“Bet it was a trick to get him to do even that.”

“Not a trick,” Liv dropped her hands with a sigh. “You know sometimes I think that’s Dean’s problem. He thinks he has to ‘ _break_ ’ into Sam’s armor. But really, you just have to learn how to read him.”

“How did you figure out how?”

She shrugged. “I paid attention.”

That was something Kevin could believe. He had spent tons of time with the Winchesters, especially with Dean but neither of them really knew him very well. But in one day he felt like Liv kind of did, at least in a different way than Sam or Dean did. It wasn’t necessarily their fault. The well being of the world was literally on all their shoulders, so there wasn’t a lot of time for pow-wows. But Liv seemed to naturally take an interest in people and started reading them right away. Kevin could see why this would clash with the kind of person Dean was. He didn’t like being read. He didn’t like seeming transparent to anyone.

But Liv, herself,  was open to being read. It’s a lot easier to read others when you are open likethat. Maybe it was a gift she had or maybe it was just the role she liked to fall into, the caretaker. No matter how many hunters were around others, it alway seemed like every single one of them was still alone, boxed into their own personal isolation of protection. Kevin had gotten used to having feelings in a vacuum, but today was different. It felt good. He could see how it probably made Sam feel good, too.

“Have you noticed anything different about him since the angels fell?” Kevin asked.

Liv’s face was stricken with concern. “Something is off,” she said quietly. “He knows it, too, but neither of us can figure out what it is. He can’t remember what happened at the hospital.”

A heavy silence fell between them leading Kevin to change the subject suddenly to television series. Liv made them both dinner while they discussed Game of Thrones, then they argued over which of their favorite bands from high school were superior using Liv’s music player to prove the other wrong. The gap in their ages became clear during this discussion. The last thing they covered before it was clear Kevin needed to go to bed was their favorite books.

The boys returned late the next night after closing the case. The spell Kevin and Liv decided on had worked pretty well, and they were beyond amused to find that some of the side effects were still affecting Dean. While Dean recounted the entire case to Kevin and Liv --who hadn’t actually asked to hear about it-- Sam made sure to jingle his keys and toss a wad of paper to display Dean’s lingering dog-ness. It was possibly the funniest thing any of them had seen in months.

“Alright! Screw you guys!” Dean grumbled.

“Did you really threaten to shoot pigeons?” Kevin asked.

“I’m going to bed!” Dean made for the hallway but Liv grabbed Sam’s keys from his hand and jingled them once more. Dean rushed right back over with hopeful eyes before he could catch himself and scowl again.

All of them burst into laughter except for Dean. “You guys can kiss my ass!”

“Nah, I’m good,” Kevin chuckled.

“Oh, I nearly forgot,” Sam said, digging through one of the bags he had laid on the table when he first entered. “We got something for you on the way back.” Sam pulled out what looked like a pack of pills and tossed them over. Kevin caught them and started reading.

“‘All-natural formula, 120-tablet, Hangover Prevention’?”

“I said we should’ve just got you some Bloody Mary mix and some vodka,” Dean interjected. “I don’t know about that ‘all-natural’ shit, but I do know sometimes the best thing for a hangover is a little morning kick.”

“Now, it’s preventative,” Sam explained, ignoring Dean. “So you have to take one daily. But it should help cushion the next hangover, if you have one.”

Kevin stared at the bottle. A smile broke across his face. “Thanks, guys.”

The Winchesters retired to their rooms, as did Liv, but Kevin stayed up a little bit longer. He felt lighter than he had in a long time and he saw things a little differently than before. For that moment, things didn’t feel as bad as they had just a few days ago.

 

\-------

Kevin sat in his room with the door shut tight, a few of the original bunker locks fastened safely, a few sigils and warding signs painted here and there just for his peace of mind. Unfortunately closed space, like the way the closet on the boat used to feel, still put him more at ease than open rooms filled with tension.

A few weeks ago, something happened that shook Liv up but she would not talk about it, no matter how many times Kevin cornered her. Once she had even snapped at him, pleading with tears in her eyes for him to drop it, so he had.  

There was a lot of whispering between Liv and Dean when Sam wasn’t around and Kevin couldn’t help but feel the tension every time they were all in the same room together. He watched her transform from the enthusiastic girl he could joke with to a brittle mess, barely keeping it together when pressed about the issue, whatever it was. Kevin was certain it had to do with Sam, but no one was cluing him in. He couldn’t decide if it was because he wasn’t to be trusted or if it was for his own protection. Either way, he started staying in his room more and more, away from whatever was going on. He felt like that made it easier on everyone.

He stared down at the notes in front of him under the pale lamp light. Translating, translating, always translating. He was finally to the point where he nearly had the entire angel tablet translated into Elamite, a language he couldn’t read, but it was a start. Maybe soon he could finally tell the Winchester whether the spell Metatron used to cast the angels from Heaven was reversible or not.

Suddenly there was a huge boom in the hallway just outside his door that seemed to shake the whole bunker. His lamp, laptop, the table, the desk, and the shelves on the walls all vibrated. Kevin tore his headphones off and jumped out of his seat, backing away from that wall. He swayed on his feet, listening in terror for another sound, anything to tip him off to what had just happened. He heard nothing.

Kevin put his hand on the locks of his door, playing with the idea of opening them and stepping into the hall, but fear made him hesitate. He turned to scan his room and grab the nearest thing he could use as a weapon. His pocket knife sat on his bedside table so he grabbed that. In the corner of his bedroom a few decades-old golf clubs still leaned against the wall, so he grabbed one of those, too. With a deep breath, he threw the door open and cautiously peeked his head out into the hallway.

A few yard away he saw Dean hovering over Liv on the floor as if they had been knocked down. The wall around them had been busted up like something had been thrown into it with great force. Even part of the ceiling above them had been hit.

“Guys? What the _fuck_ just happened?”

“It’s Sam,” Dean replied, his back still to Kevin as he continued to focus on Liv. Liv’s face was kind of terrifying. Kevin was pretty sure the way she was looking at Dean was the way she would look at someone she was about to kill.

“‘It’s Sam?’” Kevin asked, creeping slowly from his room towards them with the golf club over one shoulder and his pocket knife in his other hand. “What does that mean?”

“It’s _not_ Sam!” Liv roared, hopping up and refusing to let Dean help her when she seemed to have trouble catching her balance. “It’s an angel. One we clearly cannot trust.”

Kevin looked even more confused. “Sam let an angel in?”

“ _No_ ,” Liv said in disgust.

Dawning broke across Kevin’s face. “That’s what how you got him out of the hospital? And now the angel’s... what?”

“Taken control of Sam’s body, deleted full chunks of time from Sam’s memory, threatened to erase me completely if I let anyone know I know he’s in there--”

“--Now the last few weeks are starting to make a bit more sense--”

“--and most recently he’s thrown us down the hallway with his angel mojo and taken off.”

“We don’t have time for this!” Dean shouted, staring daggers right back at Liv. “He’s on the move and we’ve got to move, too!”

For once Liv and Kevin agreed with Dean.

“Okay!” Kevin exclaimed. “What can I do to help?”

“You stay here and find us some spells. Anything I can use to block the angel from hearing me so I can tell Sam what’s going on. Maybe then he can expel the son of a bitch from the inside.”

“Right, okay!”

“And if you run across anything that can be used to track a specific angel down, you let me know that, too.”

“On it.” Kevin turned to Liv. Her face was pale and discouraged. One tear trickled down her cheek. He grabbed her shoulder. “I’ll see if there is something about recovering memories, just in case. It’s gonna be okay.”

“Thanks,” she said. Her hand went up to cover Kevin’s hand on her shoulder. “We just have to get him back in one piece, first.”

“Let’s roll,” Dean started down the hallway with a flick of his wrist. Liv followed without hesitation. “I’ll call Cas, see if he can figure out who this guy actually is. And you and I should probably split up, cover more ground…”

His voice faded the farther and farther they got down the corridor until he couldn’t hear them anymore. Kevin noted that he thought it was a good idea for Dean and Liv to split up, not just because they’d cover more ground, but because Liv really did look like she was going to kill Dean at any moment.

Grabbing his laptop and both tablets from his room, Kevin made his way to the library to start combing through every resource he had at his disposal. It was really hard to translate when he felt this much pressure to find helpful spells and it wasn’t long before he was sweating. He had placed notes throughout four different books before he even looked up and realized it had been hours. Kevin grabbed his phone, fearing he had missed a message from Liv or Dean, but he had nothing. He wasn’t sure if this was good or bad or if it meant nothing at all.

It occurred to him that he was the only person in the bunker besides Crowley, deep in the bowls somewhere, chained up and moping, and while this place was generally warded from all manner supernatural beings, this angel who had just attacked his friends this morning had been living here for months. What if he returned? Could he just walk right back in? Before he went any farther into looking for the spells for Dean, Kevin grabbed a bottle of holy oil and some matches. He made a circle in front of every doorway into the library before he set back to work.

A few hour later Kevin finally felt like he had something useful. He called Dean who answered on the first ring.

_“How’re those spells comin’?”_

“I’ve found one that allows you to talk to the host while repressing the angel, but it requires blood and a pretty elaborate set up.”

_“Well, that’s better than nothing.”_

“You may have to lure him somewhere that’s already prepared with the sigil read to go.”

_“You got a tracking spell?”_

“Not yet. Not something that we can just use without a piece of the angel himself.”

_“What like hair or DNA or something?”_

“No, more like we’d need his grace.”

_“Dammit.”_

Kevin explained the blood spell to Dean and hung up. He went back to sifting through a few more hundred pages from the third book he was working with when Dean called back.

_“Just talked to Cas. Apparently this Zeke guy died in the fall. No idea who the angel in Sam really is.”_

Kevin sighed.

_“Kev, Sammy would have died.”_

“I know. This is just such a mess--”

 _“Goddammit! I know! I just need to find him.”_ Kevin heard Dean’s voice crack. _“There is nothing else you got so far?”_

“I’m working on it, Dean. I really am. As soon as I have anything else, I’ll call you.”

Kevin heard the phone click. About an hour later, the phone rang again.

“Still nothing new, Dean.”

_“It’s Sam.”_

Kevin froze.

_“Hello?”_

“Er, hey Sam. What’s going on?” Kevin turned the phone on speaker and quickly started texting Liv and Dean.

 _“I’m not sure.”_ His voice sounded worn and raspy. _“I don’t actually know how I got where I am.”_

“Oh yeah? That’s weird!” Kevin pressed send on a text that read:

 

 **Today** 8:24 PM

 _Kevin:_ Sam called!! ON PHONE RIGHT NOW!!

 

_“I’m not far from the bunker, though. But I’m on foot.”_

“No idea how that happened?”

_“Not a clue.”_

 

 **Today** 8:25 PM

 _Kevin_ : He’s down the street! GET BACK RIGHT NOW!!

 

“Dude, that’s so bizarre.”

_“Yeah. I think it’s safe to say there is really something wrong with me.”_

Kevin could hear Sam shuffling as he walked and talked. He was truly on his way to the bunker. “Well, man… we’ll talk about it when you get back.” Kevin swallowed. His mouth had gone dry.

_“Yeah. We’ll talk.”_

With that, the call was ended.

Kevin immediately dialed Dean.

_“Kevin!?”_

“He’s on his way!”

_“How did he sound?”_

“Like Sam. But I don’t know, I don’t think it was.”

_“Hang tight, Kev. I’m almost there! Grab some holy oil--”_

“Already done it!”

_“That’s mah boy.”_

The call ended just in time for Kevin to hear a voice in the room with him.

“There you are.”

Startled, Kevin dropped the phone and bumped against the table, knocking over the cup of coffee he had been drinking while sifting through the books. He spun around, wide-eyed, to see Sam standing in the farthest doorway of the library.

“That was fast,” Kevin said in a shaky voice, followed by nervous laughter. “You really weren’t far away…”

Sam moved deliberately. Strangely. Not like he had ever seen Sam move before. Without taking his eyes off Sam, Kevin’s hand fumbled around the tabletop, searching for the matches. Sam’s eyes darted over him, examining his movements, then a sick grin spread across his face.

The matches sat in the middle of the spilled coffee.

“Oh shit.”

Before Kevin realized what was happening, the angel using Sam’s form trudged through the circle of holy oil and laid his hand on Kevin’s forehead. Instinctually, Kevin’s hands went up to grasp Sam’s wrist, his eyes pleading with his friend not to do this, but it was no use. The angel’s grip atop Kevin’s head was like a vice and there was no sign of Sam staring back at him. Tears welled up in Kevin’s eyes, but it wasn’t from pain or from sadness even. If he could be asked about it later, he would have said that he didn’t even know what they meant. But they were there.

Heat overcame him, and a bright light that hurt his eyes stung and a scream tore from his lips, then there was nothing, and Kevin Tran fell lifeless to the floor next to his phone with the newly cracked screen.

A text message was received that read:

 

 **Today** 8:31 PM

 _Liv:_ Almost there. Matches/Holy Oil. It’s going 2B OK.

 

The angel ignored the text notification sound, stepping over Kevin to get to the table. He grabbed the two tablets and left without look back.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kevin has died and Sam is missing so Dean and Liv call on Cas and Crowley to help them track him down. With resentment and tensions running high, the four try to free Sam from the angel, but not without cost.

Kevin didn’t text back. As the minutes ticked by that he didn’t respond while Liv raced back to the bunker, the twisting dread in her stomach grew, sending ripples of panic and numbness throughout her arms and legs.

_Oh God, Kevin. At least send back a ‘K’ or a ‘Got it’ or something…_

She turned sharply down the last street that finally lead up to the bunker.

_It’s going to be okay…_

_That text went to Dean, too. I’m sure Dean has already made it back. He’s there. He’s probably there._

_It’s going to be okay…_

There was no sign of the Impala when she pulled up to the bunker. She barely turned the car off before she leapt out and raced to the entrance. She hesitated and took in a deep breath, deciding to get out her gun before going in. She knew a bullet would do no good against an angel, and the bullet would have to go into Sam, but she didn’t feel right entering the bunker under these circumstances without at least being ready to defend herself in some way. She could shoot him in the leg to slow him down if it came down to it... probably.

But maybe Dean was already there and she hoped she wouldn’t have to use it regardless of what she was about to walk into.

_It’s going to be okay..._

She crept in silently. It was dark pretty much everywhere but for the light drifting through the hallway from the library. She checked the space around her as she headed down the stairs and tried to listen for movement. She didn’t like how quiet it was. As she hit the bottom step, a crash from down the hall startled her. She froze for a second, snapping the gun into position. She proceeded the rest of the way towards the noise in that stance, cutting across the open space quickly, ready to shoot or attack at any moment. But there was no need.

Her eyes were fixed on the source of the light at the end of the hall, the lamps in the library where she knew Kevin was, and as the scene came into focus the closer she got to the room, she dropped the gun farther and farther down until she wasn’t even holding it up. She wasn’t even holding it at all. It was falling out of her hand. It fell to the ground, and she didn’t even notice or hear it rattle against the tile because all she felt when she entered the room was the numbness and dread that spread all the way into her eardrums.

“Dean?”

His back was to her and he was on his knees, hunched over in the midst of a pile of books laying askew and a broken lamp like he had thrown the stuff around and collapsed next to it on the floor in a fit of rage. Startled to hear someone else in the room, he jumped up and spun around, menacingly. When he saw it was her, his expression fell from fury instantly to anguish. Lying next to Dean’s shoes by the shattered light bulb and some loose papers was Kevin’s body, his eyes burned out completely.

_No, no, no, no…_

Liv stared, aghast. This wasn’t supposed to happen. One of them was supposed to make it back in time. And then they were supposed to nab Sam and find a way to get that angel out of him. Kevin wasn’t supposed to die. That was no where in the realm of possibility. Why would he be a target? It made no sense.

Dean stood awkwardly in the pile of his emotional fit, watching Liv take in the scene. He watched her head shake from side to side as if to deny what she was seeing. He thought about crossing the room to hug her, to try to comfort her, to turn her away and block her from looking at this horrific shit, but she hated him so much. The memory of how she had looked at him just before they had split up earlier that day to search for Sam stopped him from going to her. There was no way he would be a comfort to her. Not when she no doubt blamed him for all this.

 _She’s right to, too,_ he thought. _I let Sam down, I let O’ down, I let Kevin down._

He felt rage and shame and guilt with a twinge of nausea. How could he be expected to help anyone feel better about any of this?

Suddenly, Liv broke out of her shocked haze and darted over to Kevin’s body, falling to her knees at his side. She touched his face and turned his head from side to side, like she was trying to look for a reset button. She brushed the hair away from his forehead, blinking deliberately over and over, trying to process it.

Then a ding came from Kevin’s phone. She turned to see it laying a few feet away from Kevin’s limp hand, so she reached for it swiftly, unlocking the screen to see her own unread text message under a cracked screen:

 

**Today 8:31 PM**

_Liv:_ Almost there. Matches/Holy Oil. It’s going 2B OK.

 

_It is not going to be okay._

Dean watched her clap her hand over her mouth to stifle a cry as tears finally flooded her eyes. Streams made their way down her face as she stared at Kevin’s phone. Then without warning she let out a bitter scream and chucked the phone against the wall before burying her face in her hands. The rest of the screen shattered. Dean was surprised at this reaction but this was something he understood. It actually put him more at ease, though he’d never admit it out loud. He stepped to her side, and feeling his presence, she turned to look up at him standing over her.

“What _happened_?”

“I caught him just as he was leavin’.” Dean cleared his throat. It didn’t help change the weariness of his voice. “Pinned me against the wall so I couldn’t go after him. Told me he did what he had to do, that he was sorry, but …” Dean trailed off as his eyes fell back to Kevin.

“I don’t understand why…” Liv’s voice cracked.

“That son of bitch took the tablets. Maybe Kevin put up a fight.”

With the mess Dean made in the room, it was hard to tell what might have been part of a struggle or part of the stuff Dean had thrown around, but even as she began to try to look around and decipher what was what, she stopped herself. She couldn’t bring herself to imagine Kevin’s last minutes alive.

 _I should have gotten here faster_ , she thought. She knew she couldn’t have known this was going to be the outcome, but she still felt like a liar. And Kevin had already had it so hard. What had it all come to?

“I shoulda been here…” she heard Dean mutter above her, still staring at Kevin’s body. Liv was more angry with him than she had ever been at anyone in her life, that hadn’t changed, but she heard the pain in his voice and understood it. His guilt was her guilt and it was fierce. She knew it was Dean who had gotten them here in the first place, but she didn’t have the heart right then to focus on that. Instead she reached up and grabbed his hand and tugged herself up to her feet so she could throw her arms around his waist and lean her face against his chest and let him know that, right now, she was pausing her rage to share in this grief.

Dean wrapped his arms around her shoulders with a sigh and leaned his chin on the top of her head. He was surprised that she was willing to be anywhere near him, let alone want to hug him, especially after how they parted ways earlier in the day. Maybe she was searching for a place to stick a knife. But when it came down to it, Dean knew they were all each other had in that moment. And losing Kevin stung. He was glad she could hug him. The only way out of this now was through. And together.

“C’mon,” he breathed. “We gotta take Kevin out back and give him a hunter’s funeral.”

 

\---------

“Sammy was dyin’. What was I supposed to do?” Dean explained to Castiel while haphazardly packing for another road trip.

Liv stifled a groan as she helped Dean stuff weapons into two bags. If she had to hear him say that one more time she wasn’t sure she could stop herself from punching him in the face. She wondered if he even noticed that it sounded incredibly close to the excuse the angel had given him for why he killed Kevin.

“You let an angel possess him?” Castiel asked.

Dean shot Liv a glance, sensing Cas’ question had basically poured salt in a wound shared between the two of them. She refused to look back at him. She was still trying retain any compassion she could towards Dean, but the shock of Kevin’s death the day before had started to wear off into bitterness, and she was tired of excuses, particularly that one. This situation had gone from very, very bad to incredibly worse, and the rage she felt toward Dean was beginning to bubble up and fester again. It hadn’t taken long for the grief that made her feel a surge of sympathy for Dean to give way back to the storm of resentment. Castiel poking at Dean’s reasoning behind why he let the angel in in the first place didn’t help, and Dean could tell.

He nodded at Cas in answer, then declared menacingly, “We’ve gotta find that son of a bitch.”

“If the angel isn’t Ezekiel, who is he?”

“Dead man walking’.”

Liv slammed down the travel bag in her hand on the table, her eyes narrowing at Dean.

“What, you’re going to destroy him?” asked Cas, surprised.

“Yeah, Dean,” challenged Liv. “You going to kill your brother?”

“O, you know as well as I do we’ve got to take this guy down--”

“'This guy' is only here because you let him in--”

“You kill an angel, its vessel dies, too,” Castiel interjected.

“You think I don’t know that!”

“I was hoping you’d just forgotten” --Liv’s voice grew louder and louder as she stepped up to Dean, getting right up to his face- “because you can’t possibly be saying that the plan is to kill Sam to clean up your goddamn mess!”

Dean didn’t flinch away. He was tired of her getting on his case at every turn and if the _‘dear diary’_ sentiment from the night before was already gone, so be it. He squared right up in front of her. “If I don’t end Sam and that halo burns him out and I--”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Liv screamed, pushing Dean back by the shoulders. “You created this situation! He deserves to die for your mistakes?”

Castiel stepped up between the two, but it barely did any good. Dean looked at Liv like he might shoot her. His expression finally matched hers.

“What do you want from me, Olivia?” Dean shouted, throwing his hands up. “You want me to say I was stupid? _Fine!_ I was so damn stupid!”

Castiel put his hands up between Liv and Dean to keep them apart. “You were stupid for the right reasons, Dean.”

Liv was incensed. She snatched Castiel’s wrist, raised to keep her from charging Dean, and threw it to the side, causing Cas to turn to her with a bewildered look on his face. “Don’t give me that shit,” she growled. “Don’t make this horrific situation seem like some sort of _love letter._ You think this is better for Sam?”

“I was merely--”

“No,” she pointed her finger in Castiel’s face. “Sam has had his ass dragged all over the place doing God knows what, probably killing people --Kevin, for sure-- and having his memories erased and held hostage for months, making him think he’s going crazy! And now at the end of this _gesture of love_ , he gets to die so the monster that was allowed to highjack him against his will can be destroyed? That’s what Sam’s life will be reduced to? How was any of this better than just letting Sam go in that hospital, Dean? How is there a ‘right reason’ for this?” Her eyes darted from Castiel’s face to Dean’s. Cas looked utterly distressed but Dean wore the stony expression that meant he had blocked her words out a long time ago.

“You’re staying behind,” Dean said with finality, stepping to the table and beginning to unzip her bag to unpack it.

“The _fuck_ I am!”

Dean’s hand went into the air as if to stop her from speaking. “You can’t keep your head on straight, you won’t do us any good out there, you can’t come.”

Liv grabbed her bag out of Dean’s grasp, viciously. “I am the only one here who isn’t planning on killing Sam or making excuses for someone who is. I think I’m the only one of us who has her head on straight. I’m coming, and if you leave me behind, I’ll be on your ass in my own car the whole time anyways.” Liv raised her eyebrows at him. “Or maybe you want to tie me up here, so I don’t have the choice?” The two of them stared at each for an incredibly scary moment where Cas was pretty sure one of them would throw themselves at the other’s throat. He stepped in between them again, being sure to only put his hand up in front of Dean this time.

“Listen to me,” the angel began. “Sam is strong. If he knew an angel was possessing him, he could cast the angel out.”

Liv and Dean broke their glare-off to look at Cas. A ray of hope flashed across both their faces.

“Okay!” Liv exclaimed. “But how do we tip him off?”

“As far as I know he’s still in the dark,” Dean added.

“Alfie, he told me before he died that demons were able to... dig into angels’ minds and access their coding. We might be able to do that here, to bypass the angel and talk to directly to Sam.”

“How do we --how would that work?” Liv’s voice grew small.

Cas turned to her and gave her the unblinking, piercing angel stare that made her very uncomfortable. “Olivia, you are not going to like it. But it may actually be the only way for us to save Sam. Do you understand?” She nodded. Castiel’s head then turned to Dean. “We’re going to need Crowley.”

 

\---------

“Shotgun!”

“Uh, wrong. You’re in the back.”

Castiel smirked at Crowley as Dean directed the demon to the back seat.

Liv dug her fingernails into her palms, trying to reign her nerves in. Everything anyone did around her seemed to set her on edge. Her relationship with Castiel had always been lightly strained because of the circumstances under which they met. Liv had spent the first few months she knew the Winchesters watching Sam struggle through what she only knew at the time to be momentary lapses into some “mental trauma” from this mysterious “huge job” they had worked a few years before. The boys would never fully explain to her exactly what that entailed. Well, until they had to. The truth came out when Sam ended up in a mental ward having not slept in nearly a week. It was the first time Liv had strong-armed Dean into acknowledging that she was going to be a pretty permanent presence in their lives and she deserved to know what the hell was going on.

He relented and told her most of the story while sitting in the waiting room before visiting Sam, about how the angel they were friends with removed Sam from the Cage-- “Wait… a Cage? In Hell, like he was in actual _Hell_?” “O, there isn’t time for the whole story, but yeah!” --without his soul, causing it to be left behind, man-handled, tortured, and abused for centuries (apparently Hell time goes super fast), so when his soul was returned to his body, it destroyed him from the inside out. The only thing that had kept the danger at bay was a rickety block in Sam’s mind that this angel, Castiel, broke down _on purpose_ as some form of leverage.

Dean hadn’t really framed the event that way, but Liv wasn’t an idiot. She was able to connect the dots, and when Castiel appeared in the hospital not long after that, she was not welcoming. In fact, she had no patience with him at all and was pretty much brutal towards him. She only felt like she might be able to forgive him once he took on Sam’s hallucinations and ended up in the hospital himself.

Since then, Liv had taken her cues from Sam when it came to Cas and tried to be nice to him. If Sam could move on from what Cas did to him, she should at least try. And eventually the angel grew on her, though their interactions never ceased to be awkward. At first she thought it was because he was just awkward with everyone, but eventually it became pretty clear that he was as uncomfortable around her as she was around him, and she decided his view of her must have been shaped by their first meeting as well.

As for the King of Hell, Liv had no affection. The year she spent thinking she had lost the Winchesters forever taught her more about the nature of demons than all the hunting she had done before combined. They were manipulative and ruthlessly vindictive and they enjoyed it. It seemed like inflicting emotional pain was even more exciting for some demons than physical torture, and she could understand why. Emotional torture lasted longer. She still had nightmares about the things demons had flippantly divulged to her when they caught her at her most vulnerable.

Liv approached the enormous Cadillac Cas had stolen where it had puttered to a stop on the street. Dean was adding gas from a can and shaking his head. He’d probably find the fact that Cas didn’t realize cars need gas to work amusing on a different day, under different circumstances. With the Impala taken by not-Ezekiel, this monster of a vehicle was the better choice for the four of them --soon, hopefully, to be the five of them once they found Sam-- to travel in. Liv absolutely hated having to work with Crowley and she didn’t really appreciate the fact that he kept making light of the situation by flirting around jokes every two minutes. Everything he said or did grated on her very raw nerves. But then, he was a demon, and she was pretty sure that was the point, so the fact that he was succeeding at getting to her annoyed her even worse.

“Hey. You, too.” Dean pointed Cas towards the back seat. “Keep an eye on him.”

Cas begrudgingly followed his instructions with an angelic pout, so Liv made for the front seat and got buckled in. Had this been a regular day, Liv would probably have given Dean a hard time for telling Cas where to sit in his own car. Instead of making a quip at Dean which most likely would only end in another tension-charged explosion, Liv sat silently in the boat-like front seat, trying not to drown in waves of dread. All she wanted was Sam back, unharmed, and de-angeled as quickly as possible, but their luck had been nothing but terrible so far. Now they were asking a demon for help. She was thankful she hadn’t ended up sitting in the back with Crowley, though. She may have ended up shooting him in the head, which would do nothing but make herself feel momentarily better and would most certainly delay their search for Sam. Maybe Dean knew that, and that’s why he asked Cas to go to the back.

_How the hell are we going to pull this off?_

As Dean started the engine and drove off, she heard Crowley and Castiel bickering in the backseat.

“Hey!” she roared, whipping around to face the two. They both straightened up with wide eyes of surprise at the sudden eruption from the formerly silent passenger. “ _Stop_ ,” she commanded, eyes flaring. “My fuse is so short I might actually beat the shit out of the both of you if you aren’t careful.”

Crowley, looking impressed, chuckled in response. Liv turned back to face the dashboard.

Castiel’s dejected voice floated pitifully to her ears, “I apologize, Olivia.”

Remorse washed over her. None of this was Castiel’s fault, and even though she would probably lose it completely before the end of the day, taking it out on Castiel was not the way to go and she immediately wished she could have reeled herself back in. Cas was concerned for Sam, too. He was the one who had come up with the idea to reach Sam, afterall. He had never been very good at interacting with Liv, but he always seemed to try really hard, and with the present company she had in this car, he was probably her greatest ally.

Liv sighed and glanced back over her shoulder. “No, _I’m_ sorry,” she said in a soft tone. “It’s not your fault.”

He nodded.

“Ah, that’s right. Moose is your boyfriend,” Crowley began, listlessly.

Liv shot him a glare before turning back around to ignore him.

“Must be incredibly stressful knowing that big, broad body is out there being steered around by someone else. Why, he could do anything with it.”

“You be quiet,” Castiel warned.

“I’m just pointing out why our little Miss Outburst might be a bit on edge. No telling what kind of… _extra curricular activities_ this angel may be into.

“If you are implying that the angel possessing Sam would use his body for sexual escapades, I can assure you there are very few angels who are even interested in such things--”

“I’ve known a holy being or two in my day that have had quite the insatiable palates. And after the fall, who knows how many more are becoming interested in _experimentation_ -”

“That’s enough, Crowley!” growled Dean, staring Crowley down in the rearview mirror. “The deal was you get a field trip in return for helping us out, but that doesn’t mean you won’t travel in the trunk.”

Liv sat silently with her arms crossed over her chest as if to keep herself from physically falling to pieces. This thought hadn’t even crossed her mind, but now she had to add it to the list of concerns she kept running through in her mind. There seemed to be no end to the ways Sam’s body and agency could be abused or stolen from him in this situation. Every moment that ticked by where they weren’t with him to try to stop it made Liv more and more sick, but she refused to let Crowley see that she internalized what he said.

Liv hated demons. They always knew how to tap right in to a person’s worst fear and twist the knife around just right, and while she had learned well how to keep her cool even when being taunted about the most sensitive thing, this was the King of Hell. And this seemed to be his specialty. And he knew Liv much better than she was comfortable with. They had invited Crowley out of the dungeon and into their plan but so far Liv was not seeing the upside.

“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.” Crowley faked a wounded tone. “Don’t be mad at me. Just saying what everyone should be thinking. I’m an observer, that way. I’m not the one who created this situation, am I, Dean?”

“I will pull over right now. Don’t think I won’t do it.”

“Always so kinky, darling.”

Dean jerked the knob on the dashboard to increase the radio volume to drown Crowley out, but Liv could still hear him snickering behind her.

 

\-----------

 

Liv wasn’t sure why she thought she’d be relieved when they found Sam. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but when they tracked him down because of a red light the Impala had run in Somerset, they found another dead body in an empty house. Empty except for the unnamed angel who still looked like Sam but not exactly, who used his form to move and talk and react in unfamiliar ways, and whose eyes lingered on Liv over and over again, paired with a twisted grin Sam had never used.

She and Dean had distracted him so Castiel could get a jump on him and now they were in an abandoned warehouse, in the middle of nowhere a few miles outside of town, with the angel strapped, handcuffed, and tied in every way he could be attached to a chair, his head lolling to the side in its restraint. While the angel was unconscious, his face softened and he actually looked like just Sam.

“O, you shouldn’t get so close to him,” Dean said, glancing up from the dilapidated table where he was laying out tools he grabbed from one of his travel bags. Crowley was looking them over, eagerly, putting them in the order he wanted to use them. She knew this was why he was here, that he was the only one who knew how to crack into an angel’s brain, but seeing how excited he was to get started still made Liv’s stomach turn.

“I know,” she replied, softly. She was squatting next to the chair, looking Sam over against her better judgment, but she couldn’t help it. He was sleeping, and he looked like Sam, and she missed Sam. And she was terrified she’d never see him look like Sam again. Plus, if Dean was here to run point on this plan, Crowley was here to perform some torturous procedure, and Cas was here to heal Sam after the fact, then Liv decided her job would be to hover. She was not unaware of the sinking mistrust she had in Dean after that comment about ‘needing to take this guy down.’ She didn’t think he’d actually kill Sam, but she couldn’t have imagined he’d do all the things he’d done to get them to this point in the first place so.... And it went without saying that she didn’t and never could trust Crowley. Now that they had Sam in their custody, the only member of the team she didn’t feel like standing in between Sam and him was Cas.

So she’d hover, be visible, and let anyone who needed reminding know that she was here to represent Sam, the part of all this that was easy to overlook in his current state. The part that was squashed and invisible until they could break through and reach him. The part they were fighting to find and return to its rightful place, and the part that shouldn’t have to be destroyed to right Dean’s wrongs.

Castiel stood back a few feet with crossed arms, observing Liv and the unnamed angel. Liv reached up to Sam’s brow and brushed strands of hair away, tucking them behind his ear. “How bad is he?” she muttered to Cas, without looking back at him.

“I should be able to heal what hasn’t already been healed once we get whoever this is out of Sam.” She was glad Cas decided not to say “if” even if his tone suggested he wanted to. Liv nodded solemnly.

Suddenly, the angel started to stir. Liv shot up and backed away quickly towards Castiel. The room got very still as the angel blinked the room into focus.

“Welcome to the party, pal,” Dean snarled, stepping away from the table to be next to Liv.

“What’s your name?” Castiel asked. “I thought I knew every angel in Heaven but I’ve never seen you.”

“Why would I tell you anything?” came the angel’s odd use of Sam’s voice.

“It doesn’t matter who he is,” Liv said. The angel’s eyes landed on her, the strange smile making yet another appearance. “You need to go.”

“Olivia, it’s good to talk to you again. I haven’t forgotten our agreement but clearly you have.” Liv flashed back to the moment in Sam’s room when the angel had thrown her against a wall and threatened to delete her from Sam’s memory. The hair stood up on the back of her neck as the angel addressed this once again, but she tried to keep a stony expression.

“Shut up,” Dean commanded. “She’s right. I don’t care who you are. You need to get out -- _now_.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you and I will have a lovely little play day.” Crowley stepped forward holding a few tools in his hands.

The angel looked unphased. “Even bound I can tear this body apart,” he said, matter-of-factly.

“Do and you die,” Dean threatened. He stepped up to him with a blade drawn. The angel bucked against the restraints, leaning into it.

Liv kept her lips pulled tight.

 _He’s bluffing,_ she told herself. _He wouldn’t do it. He’s not serious._

Repeating those thoughts to herself didn’t stop her from stepping forward behind Dean to keep him in arm’s reach of her.

A smug smile broke across the angel’s face. “Then put a blade through your brother’s heart.” Dean hesitated, then dropped the knife to his side. The angel laughed. “I knew you could not destroy your brother. Not after everything you’ve been through to keep him alive, even against his own will. And that one” --the angel inclined Sam’s head toward Liv-- “wouldn’t let you, even if you tried.”

Dean paused. “ _Alright_ , but don’t forget, you’re the one tied to the chair.”

“I may be tied to this chair, but I have the upper hand. I do not care for this vessel, but I know that both of you do. I can take what you love away in a mere moment. Olivia, you know this.”

“What are you getting out of this?” Liv demanded.

“Yeah, why are you doing this?” Dean added. “We fought together, I thought you were one of the good guys!”

“I am doing what I have to.”

_I swear to God, if one more person says that to me--_

“Give us back Sam. _Please_.”

“You have me bound as a prisoner, and you think asking me nicely will do anything for you? I am in control of Sam. As long as I am in danger, so is he. There is nothing you can do to me that will not also be done to him.”

“ _Yeah, yeah yeah_ ,” Dean sighed, rolling his eyes as he turned to trudge away from the angel, tugging Liv along with him. She hesitated at first, unwilling to be pried away from Sam, but she let herself be lead back, past Crowley standing with his tools, impatient to get started. Dean threw a nod at him with a “You’re up,” as he shuffled Liv to the back of the room. “You need to buckle up, okay?” Dean said, spinning her around to face him.

“What are you talking about?”

“What Crowley is about to do over there, it ain’t gonna be easy to watch. I’m just sayin’, you need to be prepared.”

“I am,” she assured him, though she was looking past him at the back of Crowley’s form as he approached the chair with a tool. This wasn’t hovering. She needed to be closer to Sam. “I can handle it.”

“I’m telling you, I’ve had to sit through this before. It ain’t gonna be pretty.”

Liv nodded, impatiently. Her focus was still across the room.

“Look at me,” --A blood curdling scream came from the chair. It didn’t sound like the angel. It sounded like Sam. Dean flinched, but continued-- “ _O_ , look at me!” He gripped her shoulders to get her attention and her terrified eyes focused on his face.

“Swear to me, Dean. Swear to me this is our last chance. This is what we have to do to rescue Sam?”

As Sam let another scream loose, Dean’s eyes went glassy. “It’s all we got,” he heeved with great effort. It was obvious there was not much he hated more than this.

There was a silent moment before Liv nodded at him. She could do this if she had to. They were backed into a corner, and she hadn’t forgotten how they arrived here, but she could sit by and endure this if that’s what had to happen to fix it, like having to set a broken bone before it can be cast and begin to heal. She wouldn’t leave Sam’s side.

Another horrific scream came. Liv jerked herself from Dean’s grasp and tore back across the room towards the chair, leaving Dean to stare after her in bewilderment. She slowed just before she reached Crowley, hard at work picking his next appliance, when Sam’s head came into view over the demon’s shoulder. There were pins sticking out of his forehead with blood trickling down from every one. Liv clapped her hand over her mouth at the sight, whipping back around to glimpse Dean across the wide room. He didn’t get closer to Crowley and the angel. With every cry Sam made, Dean shrunk away until he was all the way against the back wall. Liv could see the pain etched across his face even in the dank lighting.

But Liv couldn’t be far. If Sam was really suffering as much as the angel seemed to be, the least she could do was be near.

“Curious are we?” shouted Crowley over another of Sam’s howls, twisting a new needle into place. Liv’s hand was still up over her face in horror, tears spilling out of her eyes. “Come now, it’s not that bad. It can even be fun if you know what you’re doing.”

“Crowley, just--” Liv started, her mouth suddenly dry. “Just do your job, but don’t talk to me.” Liv grabbed one of the other busted up chairs near the table and pulled it around in front of Sam and Crowley as he worked. She pulled her knees up to her chest as she sat and hid behind them when she had to.

“You sure you want a front row seat? If this part got your knickers in a bunch, what’s coming will only--”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she yelled, eyes narrowing. “Now seriously. Shut up.”

“As you wish, love.” He winked at her as he went to pick another device off the table.

Liv wasn’t really sure why Dean had decided to pull her away and give her a little speech about how she needed to pull herself together and brace herself for what's coming when he couldn’t stick around for it, himself. About twenty terrible screams later, Liv heard the door open and she turned just in time to see it close behind Dean. Cas followed immediately. The fury on her face when she turned back amused Crowley so much he couldn’t help but comment on it.

“He’s a big tough man, isn’t he?” he laughed, pausing from the torture he was bestowing on their guest to wait for Liv to respond.

She didn’t want to play into his game so she said only, “It’s his brother.”

“Well, yes. His _beloved_ brother. But Sam is your _beloved_ , too.” Crowley reached for a syringe. “And yet, here you are.” He stuck the syringe in Sam’s temple. Sam sputtered and gasped as the needle continued on. Liv closed her eyes and covered her face with both her hands.

“I told you I don’t want to talk,” she whimpered through her hands.

“You can’t fool me, darling,” continued the King of Hell. “I see people as they really are. It’s a gift you acquire after centuries of torturing souls. Call it intuition, if you like--”

“I don’t want to call it anything!”

Crowley went on as if she had said nothing. “You stay in here because you feel like it means something if you suffer right along side ol’ Pin-Head, here. But because of that, you think you’re better than Dean since he abstains. He won’t sit by and increase his own pain by watching Sam’s, so he is less than you.”

Crowley paused to look her over, feeling her out for if there was a reaction bubbling under the surface.

“You’re a martyr,” he continued. “ _Oh!_ The devoted lover who is willing to subject herself to torment so that her paramour will not suffer alone. A _righteous_ choice--”

“I am not a martyr,” Liv snapped, finally. “I am not staying here to be righteous.”

Crowley grinned to himself as he turned back to twist and rearrange some of Sam’s pins. After a few bursts of agonizing shouts, Crowley turned back to Liv and continued.

“Well, in the end, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Samantha will endure physical torture whether you sit alongside him or join _our-fearless-leader_ in the hallway.” He tapped Sam on the forehead, making the angel’s eyes flutter. “You’re moose won’t know the difference. You, my lovely, are trying to prove a point.”

“I am trying to make sure you don’t screw us over again!”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “I keep my bargains. Besides, you know as well as I do that I enjoy the art of torture far too much to waste this opportunity. I have no reason to ‘screw you over’ when I get what I want by doing something I enjoy.” Crowley leaned against the table with a smirk on his face. “Just admit I’m right.”

“You are trying to run me out of this room.”

“No. I’m not.”

“It won’t work.”

“Good, because I’m not.”

“I am not leaving you alone with Sam.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Liv shook her head angrily.

Crowley pointed at her expression. “That isn’t about me.”

“Shut up.”

“I can tell because--”

“Shut up, Crowley!”

“--if I wasn’t right about this, you wouldn’t be so agitated--”

“ _Yes_!” Liv screeched, bursting from the fetal position she had been curled up in on her chair. “I think Dean should be in here! I think he should have to see this!” Crowley cocked his head at her, entertained by her outburst. “Sam didn’t ask for any of this, especially not to be tortured, but he doesn’t get to wait in the hallway until the worst part is over! So yes, okay. _Fine_ , Crowley, call me a martyr or self righteous or whatever else you think will get at me, but I am not leaving this room because at least someone who claims to give a shit about Sam should be with him while this is going on!”

They stared at one another. Liv couldn’t handle the amused look on Crowley’s face.

“Shouldn’t you be working!” she yelled. “I mean… what is taking so long? Why haven’t you broken through yet?” She pulled her knees back up to her chest, awkwardly.

Crowley shrugged and went obediently back to his duty, knowing how upsetting it was for her to have gotten him back on track. “You never know with these kinds of things. Each angel and vessel combination is different. That’s why it takes a real expert to do something like this.” More screams came from Sam. Liv blanched again until he stopped. “I can just imagine how all this Moose yelling must affect you. Probably doesn’t help all those complicated feelings you have towards Dean right, am I right?”

Liv sighed. “If you think you can make me any angrier at Dean than I already am” --she reached up to wipe her face with an ironic smile-- “you’d be wrong.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow at her. “Darn,” he said with faux disappointment. “My plan has failed.”

“It… does ...not...matter---” croaked the angel, weakly. Both Crowley and Liv were startled to hear him speak for the first time since the torture had begin. Liv leapt from her seat to be right next to the chair. She and Crowley leaned in to hear him better. “It does ...not…. matter--” he said again, struggling to keep his head up, blood trickling down his face.

“What?” Liv whispered. “What doesn’t matter?”

Crowley shushed her.

“It does not matter… what you do, Olivia…” the angel’s gaze zoned in on her underneath a furious brow. “Even if you … get Sam Winchester back... he will not ...know you…” Her eyes widened in horror as she backed away. Liv felt a wave of nausea hit as she saw the contorted way the angel shaped Sam’s smile once again, and for a moment she was back in Sam’s room, being held down with Sam’s hands and told with Sam’s voice that she had to walk a fine line, or the stranger inside would destroy part of Sam’s mind to get rid of her. She had scrambled through weeks in terror to try to find a way around that, but now there was no escaping it. Had there ever been? The only leverage the angel had anymore was his hold on Sam’s body and mind. What was keeping him from following through with that threat now? When she was sitting by watching him being tortured?

Crowley stepped in front of her, shaking his head frustratedly, adding a few more pins, turning some of the ones already in place into new positions as the angel screamed. Liv stumbled back, knocking the chair over and nearly falling back against it on the floor. When she caught her balance she took in a deep breath and tried to calm herself. It was still possible that the angel was bluffing. He had threatened to tear Sam's body apart, too, and he hadn’t done that yet even though Dean was no where around to carry out his counter-threat on the angel. Maybe there was still a chance. Liv decided she couldn’t afford to believe anything else.

Suddenly Sam’s voice started repeating a phrase in Enochian over and over again. Crowley hopped back a little to look him over. It was unnerving but it seemed to mean Crowley was finally getting somewhere. The angel’s eyes were unfocused and his head was collapsing to one side as he fell silent. Crowley reached out and flicked a pin near Sam’s left temple and the angel repeated the Enochian again.

“Go get the lovebirds in the hall,” Crowley said, staring interestedly at the angel’s blank expression.

Liv rushed obediently to the door at the back of the room and threw it open. “Something is happening!” she exclaimed, then raced back into the room. Dean and Castiel followed close behind. They all stood in front of the angel expectantly. Crowley reached for the pin again and the angel repeated the Enochian.

“What does it mean?” Dean asked.

“It’s his name…” Castiel said, narrowing his eyes, and before anyone could ask another thing, Castiel descended on the angel in the chair. He was shaking him by the collar and yelling before Dean and Liv could tear him away. “What the hell are you doing, man!”

Cas was breathless with rage. “He’s Gadreel! An angel that’s been locked in Heaven’s prison since the beginning!”

“The beginning?” Liv said. “The beginning of what?”

“Of _everything_. Of time. This is the angel that let Lucifer into the Garden.”

“The …” Dean sputtered. “Like the Garden of Eden?”

Crowley raised his eyebrows, impressed.

Castiel glared at Sam. “He ruined the world. He ruined the _universe_!”

“You can’t attack Sam,” Liv snarled, stepping in front of Castiel and placing her hands against his chest to brace him. “That’s kind of the complete opposite of what we’re doing here.”

“Doesn’t seem that way,” Crowley quipped.

Liv groaned and rolled her eyes.

“ _Alright_!” Dean shouted. “So what do we do now that the angel’s been…rebooted?”

Crowley stepped back over to Gadreel. “Could mean we’re on the right track,” he said. “But I’ve still got some work to do. If our Moose can hold out, that is.” He turned a few of the pins, causing Sam to gasp and wheeze. For a second it looked like Sam was coming out of his trance but then the angel’s cadence came booming through Sam’s voice.

“You can tinker all you want, it will change nothing!” shouted Gadreel. “You will never find your brother in here.” Dean’s face tightened as the angel went on. “I have eternity to watch you try and try and fail every time.”

“Shut up!” Dean bellowed, charging towards the chair, pushing Crowley to the side. He stood in front of Gadreel as if he didn’t really know what to do with all his fury and just when Liv was sure he was going to punch the angel, he spun around to face the rest of them. “That’s it, it’s time for Plan B,” he growled.

The three of them blinked at Dean.

“Cas, you gotta possess him.”

“ _What?_ ” shrieked Liv.

Castiel looked a little shocked. “Dean I--”

“Go, now!” Dean commanded.

“A double possession! Are you crazy?” Liv rushed to Dean’s side and tugged at his arm, but Dean would not break eyes with Castiel.

“It could possibly work,” Cas began, “but there is no way I can enter a vessel without permission.”

Crowley cleared his throat.

 _“No!”_ Liv and Dean shouted at Crowley together.

The demon stepped towards Dean. “You have a better idea, Squirrel? The Moose is nearly fried. _He_ doesn’t have an eternity”

“Crowley, you can’t!” Liv screamed.

“Pish posh! Of course I can. Demons can take any vessel they like. I can go into Sam’s head. I can reach him. I _can_.”

“You are _not_ going to possess Saml!” Liv snapped around to Castiel. “Cas, tell them this is crazy!”

Castiel looked incredibly troubled. “Sam is strong…”

Liv’s eyes widened. “You guys cannot be considering this!”

“Of course if I do this for you,” Crowley addressed Dean, ignoring Liv’s noncompliance.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll let you off the leash,” Dean returned.

“I save Sam, I leave here a free man.”

Dean hesitated, in thought. His eyes went from Liv to Castiel. Then, as his eyes turned glassy once more, his face set. “Cas, burn off Sam’s tattoo.”

As Castiel stepped forward towards Sam obediently, Liv screamed a resounding _“No!”_ that shook the crumbling warehouse. She made to stop him, but Crowley caught her by the arms and held her with surprising strength. He shouted “It’s the only way!” and “I will bring him back!” over her screams, but she didn’t listen or care as she watched the last bit of protection Sam had left get seared away. She struggled under Crowley’s hold until Castiel backed away and it was done. Crowley heaved her out of his arms straight into Dean. She whipped back around to come at Crowley but Dean wouldn’t let her.

“When you find Sam,” Dean began, struggling to hold Liv in place, “say ‘Poughkeepsie’. It means drop everything and run.”

The King of Hell nodded as he sat in Liv’s chair, preparing to leave his long-time vessel.

“Were you really trying to help before?” Liv asked, weakly, leaning back against Dean who would not release her arms. “Or were you just building up to this?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Was all that torture really necessary? Or were you just putting on to make us desperate for another way? And now you have a real bargaining chip to get out of the dungeon for good?” She felt Dean stiffen as this possibility dawned on him.

A smirk crossed Crowley’s face. “I did what I was asked to do. And now I’m about to do it again. Soon you lot will be thanking me.” And with that, he smoked out of his vessel and into Sam. The smoke was red and filled the air as the smell of sulfur burned their noses. As Sam’s mouth closed around the last of the cloud, Liv let out a little cry.

Had the King of Hell really just lead them on a merry chase of torture, pushing their emotional limits by needlessly hurting Sam so eventually one of them would be begging Crowely to perform a demonic miracle in exchange for his freedom?

_I hate demons._

Sam was strong and Sam could handle this, but ...

_Fucking hell, he shouldn’t have to._

As she felt Dean’s grip slacken, she jabbed him in the elbow to completely break free, then landed a punch across his cheek with her right fist and another under his jaw with her left. Dean stumbled back with an angry grunt. Liv crossed the room to the chair where Crowley’s vessel sat unmoving, dead. She dumped him out on the floor and pulled the chair back next to Sam before sitting in it herself. She faced Sam completely so she wouldn’t have to see Dean or Castiel. She couldn’t really bring herself to look either of them in the face. Dean was opening and closing his mouth, trying to readjust his jaw as he paced around the room, nervously. No one said anything. The air was thick with tension and there was nothing that could be said to make this situation any better.

After what seemed like a year, suddenly Sam’s eyes flew open and from his wide mouth, a bright light shot out. Castiel, Liv, and Dean all converged on the chair, watching the angelic matter float to the top of the room then retreat through a window. Not a second later the wispy smoke of Crowley came charging from Sam’s mouth and headed back into Crowley’s vessel. For the first time, Sam blinked and shook his head and they could be sure it really was him.

Castiel immediately went to healing the damage from Crowley’s work, a hand across Sam’s forehead.

“Cas?” Sam wheezed.

Liv knelt next to Sam, unlocking the warded handcuffs, tossing them to the side, then grabbing his hand tenderly. “Sam,” she muttered, staring up at him. “Are you okay?”

He stared back at her perplexed as Cas undid the head restraint. He paused before replying, “I don’t know…”

Headlights crossed the windows of the warehouse. Castiel rushed to see who had arrived.

 _“Sam?”_ she breathed. He looked back at her, exhausted and in pain. She squeezed his hand. “We’re going to get you out of here.” He just stared back at her and nodded. Liv searched for some sort of recognition in his eyes. There was none.

“It’s Abaddon,” Cas announced.

“The back door,” Crowley commanded. “I’ll handle this.”

In one movement, Dean and Liv hoisted Sam up out of the chair, each under one arm. With Castiel at the rear to cover them, they made their way out, towards the dock behind the warehouse, leaving the King to meet the Knight of Hell.

They ran as far out towards their cars as they could until Sam couldn’t make it any further, the three of them stumbling as Sam lost his footing. Sam was heavy, but Liv grabbed him around his waist and steadied him, pushing his shoulder up to help balance him on his feet. Dean wouldn’t let loose of Sam’s wrist, tugging Sam’s arm tight around his neck as he counterbalanced his little brother’s wobbly legs.

Castiel rushed around to examine Sam’s status. His angel stare dug into Sam’s tired eyes as he placed his hand on Sam’s forehead.

“How does he seem?” Liv asked with great effort. Sam was standing, but just barely. Even with Dean’s help, Sam’s weight was a challenge.

Castiel continued to scrutinize Sam with his fingers to Sam’s forehead and within a few moments, Sam was standing on his own. He straightened up to his full height, and while he looked ragged, he seemed good enough to move around on his own. He actually looked unbelievable considering what he had just been through.  

“He should be alright,” Castiel announced. “We will have to continue to heal him in stages for a while, but he should be fine.”

“That’s great,” Dean affirmed, grabbing Sam’s shoulder, relief all over his face.

Liv was thankful to have Sam back. She did feel relief, but fear still gripped her, too. The angel said Sam wouldn’t know her, and so far he had given her no sign that that wasn’t true, so she came around to face him to see his response to her, searching still for a reaction that was familiar. He didn’t give her one. She stepped close to him, as if to hug him to see how his body responded to her. He hesitated, watching her clasp her arms loosely around his waist and lay her head on his chest. His hands came up awkwardly to her back. It was all wrong. So much so, that even Dean noticed.

“What’s the matter, Sammy?”

“I--?” Sam started, stiffly.

“Sam.” Liv pulled away to see his face. “Do you know who I am?” she asked, flatly.

Sam looked from Castiel to Dean and then back to Liv with a pained expression. “Am I…?” he stuttered. “Am I supposed to?”

Her heart sunk.

“Sam, this is Olivia,” Castiel defined with a slightly scandalized face.

“What the hell did that bastard do to you,” Dean exclaimed, reaching up to touch Sam’s forehead, like there would be visible evidence of the memory damage. Sam knocked his hand away, angrily.

Liv turned away from the group and started walking. She needed to be away.

“Dean, what happened?” she heard Sam demand.

“Sammy, you would have died…!” Dean’s explanation of the last few months faded away as Liv got farther from them. She let one large sob explode out of her as she reached the rickety wooden fence at the dock. She grabbed it to steady herself. She was so overwhelmed by what this meant, she didn’t even know how to begin to process it. All she could define the feeling as for now was ‘loss.’ She was a stranger to him now. The angel had been able to steal him from her afterall.

Unexpectedly, Liv felt a soft hand on her shoulder. When she looked back she found Castiel standing over her, his brows rumpled up in worry. “The boys seemed to need to be alone,” he said. “And you seemed like you might need to not be alone.” He stated it, but it sounded like a question.

“Thanks, Cas,” she said faintly to let him know he could stay. Cas scanned over her from head to foot, possibly look for physical wounds he might heal. He could fix things like that.

It was windier up on the dock so the two of them stood silently just listening to it rattle the weeds and clank metal together somewhere off in the darkness of the night. They could see the Winchesters talking across the lot..

“I am sorry this has happened,” said the angel.

“You can’t heal it, can you?” she asked, still watching the boys deep in conversation.

“Memory damage is complicated,” he replied. “It’s not really about healing. It would be more like _reacquiring_. No, there is most likely nothing I can do.”

She nodded.

“I wish there was,” he said solemnly.

“It’s not your fault.” Her voice was monotone and distant. That’s when she saw the boys part, Sam was coming toward her and Cas, but Dean looked like he was headed toward his car. She tore away from her spot next to Castiel and caught Sam halfway. “What’s going on? Where’s Dean going?”

Sam shook his head sadly, “He’s leaving.”

“ _Leaving?_ To go where?”

“He didn’t say, just that he’s ‘poison.’”

Dean was nearly to the Impala so she started to take off toward him, but Sam caught her arm at the elbow, gently but firm.

“Don’t stop him, Olivia,” he sighed. “Just let him go.”

Sam hadn’t called her that since the first time they met. She narrowed her watery eyes at him, jerked her arm out of his grasped and said “It’s Liv.” Then she ran after Dean. She didn’t care what his reason was for going. He could not abandon her now. Not after all they had been through.

They finally had Sam back. And Dean was leaving now? And without any explanation?

Dean pulled the driver-side door open and started to get in when he saw Liv approaching at nearly full sprint. He shook his head as he stepped away from the car. It was clear he was hoping he could escape without having to do this.

“Where the _hell_ are you going?” she yelled as she stopped short of the Impala, out of breath.

“I can’t stay, O,” he said simply.

“What are you talking about?"

“It’s to protect you guys. Bad stuff happens around me.”

“You can’t leave. What happened to ‘we’re in this together’? You said to trust you!”

“Yeah, and look what happened!”

“So you’re just going to abandon me now? Sam’s safe, the angel’s gone, so it’s finally okay to run away from your mistakes?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “It’s ain’t like that and you know it!”

“It’s exactly like that, Dean! You are leaving when we actually need you the most.”

“You don’t need me,” he grumbled making a move towards the Impala, Liv stepped in between him and the car.

“Please don’t go.”

“O, get away from the car.”

_“Please!”_

“Move.”

“He doesn’t even know my name, Dean!”

“Olivia _move_!” He caught her by the shoulders and jerked her away from the car to the side, but she grabbed the collar of his shirt and wouldn’t let go.

“You’re a coward,” she cried. She felt pathetic and desperate but she wasn’t going to beg him to stay again. She released his shirt. He jerked away from her and climbed in the car. He hesitated, as if searching for something to say before he left, but he couldn't. Instead he just slammed the door shut. The engine roared to life and Dean peeled out, leaving Liv, Sam, and Castiel standing scattered across the parking lot.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel, Sam, and Liv try to find a way to track down Gadreel, while Sam deals with the aftermath of what happened to him while he was possessed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place during First Born, 9.11.

Liv woke as though she was made of solid ice and had to thaw out slowly. Gradually life poured back into her limbs and up through her chest and on into her eyes as sleep blurred away into focus. She felt like a she had been hit by a freight train and dragged behind it a few hundred feet. It was a different sensation than anxiously jerking out of sleep. For weeks she had been used to waking up and feeling a sharp twinge of dread hit her gut as sleep faded from her mind and reality kicked in and she began once again wondering how things were going to turn out in this mess that Dean had created. But this morning was different. Now she knew how everything turns out, and while it wasn’t as terrible as her worst fear, it was still pretty bad.

As the weight of reality set in, it was a slow burn.

Liv wiped her hands across her eyes and and felt clumps of dried mascara around them. She had laid down the night before with no intention of sleeping. She didn’t think she would be able to so it didn’t occur to her that she should wash her face or even change her clothes. She still smelled like the warehouse where Gadreel had been expelled.

She sat up sharply as the smell pushed vivid images of the night before into her mind: of Sam with pins sticking out of his forehead, Sam with syringes being jabbed in his neck, Sam having Crowley crammed down his throat while she screamed nearby, being held in place by Dean. Liv shook her head to try to dispel the flashback and keep a wave of nausea at bay. At least the angel had been kicked out….

Yes, the angel was gone, but only after a terrifying ordeal. Kevin was dead --something she still hadn’t fully processed-- and there was no doubt Sam would continue to believe it was his fault, even though he had no control over what the angel chose to do with his body. Liv doubted she could have convinced him not to blame himself even if he could remember who she was, but now she was sure there was no reasoning with him. He was chronically at fault for most everything, in his mind, even though Gadreel should take the blame...

 _And Dean,_ thought Liv, bitterly. _Goddamnit! Fucking Dean._

That was another thing. Dean was gone. And God knows where to. He had just completely abandoned Sam. And her. After everything he had put Sam through. And her through. After all the promises he had made over and over, after he insisted everything would turn out okay if she trusted him, and after he dragged this whole thing out for far too long. _“Not on my watch!”_ he had said, and _“I’m not gonna let that happen!”_ But it had happened, and Liv was certain it was on Dean’s “watch,” whatever the fuck that meant. What made her more angry than anything was the fact that Dean couldn’t face the situation he created, so he left. And now who was left to deal with it? Liv. And Cas, thankfully, who had stayed behind with them. And Sam.

 _And Sam._ The twinge of dread started to overtake the slow burn as her brow knitted in despair. She was going to have to leave her room and face this new Sam she wasn’t sure how to deal with. The angel had taken him from her, erased her from his memories, and now she would be a literal stranger living down the hall from him. She wasn’t completely sure how she was going to be able to face a Sam who would look at her like she was no one in particular. Anguish wrestled with rage one more time when she thought of how needless this was and how incredibly Dean’s fault it was.

She pushed herself up off the bed, refusing to shed tears before coffee, and grabbed her phone to see if Dean had returned any of her thousand text messages from the night before.

 

 **Today** 1:37 AM

 _O:_ Where did u go?? Why won’t u reply??

 

 **Today** 1:49 AM

 _O:_ How the fuck could u just leave??

 

 **Today** 2:01 AM

 _O:_ Dean plz! Dont ignore me! You owe us mOre than this! U just LEFT HIM after everything he’s been thru! U LeFT ME! Was everything u said bullshit?

 

 **Today** 2:02 AM

 _O:_ Sam doesn’t even know my last name u asshole

 

 **Today** 2:08 AM

 _O:_  what am I supposed to do!?

 

 **Today** 2:26 AM

 _O:_ answer me please

 

 **Today** 2:41 AM

 _O:_ i can’t do this alone

_Delivered_

 

She had given up after that, wondering if he even cared that part of Sam’s past had been deleted from his brain. He had allowed it --even requested for it to happen-- time and time again while allowing Gadreel to stay all those months, and the memories he lost weren’t of Dean. Maybe protecting Sam against the angel’s threat to erase Liv was never a real priority to him. Maybe as long as Sam was physically alive, nothing else really mattered to him, including the shit Sam had to be dragged through while Dean tried to keep him alive. Collateral damage was something that had to be tolerated. Betrayal didn’t even begin to cover how she felt after this thought had struck her. She had tossed her phone on her nightstand and rolled over to scream into her pillow.

Liv scrolled through the text thread and was unsurprised to see that Dean never texted her back throughout the night. She rolled her eyes, threw a pair of jeans and a t-shirt on, and made her way to the bathroom to assess the damage crying herself to sleep had done to her puffy face.

Sam and Castiel were already at the long table in the bunker library, digging through stacks of book, when she finally found them. The bunker was huge and she still wasn’t used to all the different places people could be hiding. She almost cracked a smile remembering one morning she actually had to call Sam’s cell phone to find him because she had gotten herself lost down some corridor she didn’t even know existed.

As she entered the room, she felt the air shift. Both Cas and Sam looked up at her as though they had just been talking about something they weren’t prepared for her to hear.

Sam looked ragged. The torture from the night before showed all over him. Plus grief and guilt still hung in his expression. She couldn’t help but fixate on his tired face, he was so visibly worn down. His body had been used against his will to do terrible things, he lost one of his only living friends, he had needles jabbed in his brain, his last remaining protection from stolen agency was burned off his chest at the order of his own brother, and all the while there was an illusion placed in his mind to trick him into thinking everything was fine, having no idea the catastrophe he was a part of that was in no way his fault. Then to come back from it in the middle of not only one possession, but two at once…? Liv felt betrayed by Dean but it couldn’t possibly be anything compared to what Sam must be feeling right now.

Their eyes met and there was no hiding the sadness she felt for him. Sam shifted in his seat like he thought about standing up, but he didn’t. Neither one knew how to address the other.

“Uh, hey,” Sam faltered awkwardly, then cleared his throat. “Hi-- Good morning.” Castiel eyed Sam like he was prepared to redirect Sam if he got off course.

Liv’s instincts told her to rush over to Sam, to the Sam who was finally only Sam, Sam who was his own for the first time in months, and throw herself across him and hug him fully without restraint, without fear that at any moment blue light would burn out from those eyes and she’d see the stranger step forward into Sam’s form. She had missed feeling comfortable around Sam so desperately that seeing him reading a book and sitting with Cas at the table, knowing they had banished Gadreel for good, kind of made her emotional, but she recovered quickly. She couldn’t rush over to him and touch him, and kiss him, and bury herself in his chest. He wouldn’t wrap his arms back around her, cradling her in relief that the ordeal was over. He wouldn’t know that she had gone through this nightmare right along with him. She was no one to him.

 _He doesn’t know me,_ she reminded herself. She looked stricken for just a second, but she didn’t want him to feel guilty for her pain, along with all of the other stuff he clearly felt. She knew Sam well enough to know if anyone could find a way to blame themselves for others’ pain, even that of a stranger, it was him. So she straightened up, took in a deep breath, and tried to appear like she was okay. Okay enough, at least.

“How are you, Sam?” Liv croaked. She hoped the way her voice cracked could be attributed to how early it was.

“Better than I was yesterday.” He let his eyes continue to linger on her. She could tell he was studying her.

“I’m sure,” she replied, shifting on her feet. She knew she couldn’t count on Castiel to help break the tension so she turned her attention to him, trying to remember how she might act on a normal day. “Morning, Cas.”

“Good morning, Olivia,” Cas said. “We were just… going over the notes we have accumulated so far when you came into the room.”

“Yeah?” she said, flickering her eyes suspiciously to his face before circling around to read some of the titles of the books they had stacked on the table. Cas was actually pretty bad at lying, but she let him recover graciously as not to make it more awkward. “So what are we up to?” All the books had to do with angelic spells and sigils.

“Well, Cas thinks that there is probably some kind of spell we can perform to locate Gadreel and track him down.”

“Yes sometimes after a possession, a bit of the angel’s grace might be left behind.”

“Like angelic residue?”

Sam grimaced.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Something similar to that, yes,” Cas answered.

“So if we have the angel’s grace, we can use it like a GPS chip angel locator?”

The two nodded.

“Alright then,” Liv said with forced resolve. “I’ll help you guys dig, but I need coffee first. Have you had any yet?” She was asking Sam. He seemed surprised by this.

“Uh, no I haven’t. Just came straight in and got to work.”

“Okay, I’ll make enough for us both.” She made an attempt to smile, but it faded pretty quickly.

 _This is brutal._ But part of her was just so relieved to see Sam mostly whole and safe, it tempered the part of her that seemed to constantly want to burst out weeping.

She turned on her heels and headed down the hall to the kitchen. The energy between the two of them was very odd. Liv felt like every time Sam looked at her he was confused by what he saw, or he was trying to decode something that wasn’t translating properly. It made trying to act normal a lot harder. The face he made when she asked him if he recognized her the night before jumped into her mind again. This revelation seemed to be good at finding new ways to sting.

“I will come help you,” called Cas, and she heard his deliberate angel pace come trudging up behind her. She shook her head at the angel’s complete lack of subtlety, amused and slightly embarrassed for him. When he caught up to her, he walked right next to her without looking at her, waiting until they were out of Sam’s earshot. Then he stepped in front of Liv, cutting her off in mid-stride and turning to face her, looking directly into her eyes with his piercing angel gaze. Liv was always a little uncomfortable with Castiel because of that gaze. He spoke quickly. “Olivia, I lied before. We weren’t talking about notes we had taken this morning when you walked in.”

Liv cocked her eyebrow at him and nodded. “Yeah, Cas. I kind of gathered that.”

His face tightened a little. “Do you think that means Sam probably suspects that I am not actually coming with you to help with the coffee?”

Liv tried not to roll her eyes. Cas didn’t drink coffee and had never shown interest in brewing it himself for as long as she had known him. “Yes. I do think that.”

His eyes darted from side to side awkwardly but he went on. “Well, I took it upon myself to try to fill Sam in on yours and his situation, seeing as how I’m the third party here and it might be difficult for the two of you to discuss it with things as they… are now.”

Liv pursed her lips. “Um,” --she paused, nervously-- “What does that mean?”

“Your situation. The two of you being in love. I explained that to Sam earlier this morning.” Liv wasn’t sure what her face looked like but it was clearly distressed enough that Castiel picked up on it. “Should I not have done that?”

Liv ran her hand up over her face and tangled it up in her hair with a sigh. “No, Cas. I mean...that’s- that’s okay, I guess.” How _were_ they exactly supposed to deal with this situation? Was there a right way? It was jarring for Liv to hear Cas talk about her and Sam. Dean was always trying to avoid ever acknowledging that his little brother had a love life, and outside of him, there was no one else who really knew the two of them together besides Kevin. Furthermore, Liv and Sam had barely even discussed their own relationship with each other, so hearing it put in such blunt terms caught her off guard. It hadn’t occurred to her how Cas might view them, or that he had ever even taken the time to notice. Or that he cared enough to want to help them through whatever it was they were in now.

Cas went on. “I thought it might be helpful. It seemed odd to me that you would have to tell him so yourself. Informing someone that they are in love with you might sound brash, but coming from an outside nuetral party, it might make more sense. With Dean being gone, I felt I should possibly step into that role.” He hesitated awaiting her response. “Don’t you think Dean would have explained things to Sam if he were here?”

Liv snapped out of her distressed pose by dropping her hand from her hair and really focused on Castiel for a second. Liv was touched. He was really trying to pick up the pieces of the wreck Dean had left behind the best that he could. And he was right, it was a lot less awkward for Cas to fill Sam in on their “situation” than for her to have to do it. She hadn’t even had time for it to occurred to her that she should. Cas had actually taken some of the pressure off of her, and that at least explained why Sam kept looking at her with such scrutiny in his eyes.

“I don’t know what Dean would do,” she said, reaching up to straighten the tie under his trenchcoat, “but I’m glad you did.” She smiled at him, and it was a real smile, not one she had to force. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He nodded. “I felt it necessary to fill you in. He knows the bare essentials. This may make things run more smoothly between you two while we work.” And without another word, he turned to go back to the library. Liv, slightly amused and stunned, wondered what exactly the angel thought the “bare essentials” were, but then caught Cas by hissing his name in a loud whisper.

When he jerked back around to face her she said, “You want to at least pretend you helped me in the kitchen before you go back?”

“Oh. Yes.” Cas nodded as he trudged back towards her. “I’ll make a peanut butter sandwich.”

Liv and Cas returned to the library not long after that, Liv with two cups of coffee (that Castiel had not helped Liv brew), and Cas with his half-eaten sandwich.

“That did not taste like I remembered,” he said sadly, sitting back down in his place at the table. He popped the last piece in his mouth.

Sam looked up from his book as Liv sat his cup in front of him. He caught her eye briefly and just stared until he caught himself and said a stiff, “Thanks.”

“Sure,” she replied, and sat across the table from him with her own cup, pulling a book toward her to start sifting through.

Sam brought the the coffee up to his lips, but before he sipped it, he seemed to be studying it. Liv watched him from behind the book in her hands wondering what he thought she had done to his mug. He stared into the cup for a few more seconds before taking a drink, then he leaned back in his chair with a furrowed brow and continued to stare at his drink.

“This is really good,” he said, but it sounded like an accusation.

She lifted her head from the book as though she hadn’t been watching him. “Thanks?”

“No but --I mean this is _just_ how I like my coffee.”

“I know, Sam.” He squinted his eyes at her like he was trying to see her but she wouldn’t come completely into focus. A sad silence fell between them.

She had ordered coffee with him countless times when they had to get it to go on cases on the road. She had made his coffee dozens of mornings in the bunker the last few months. Just the year before during one of her longer stays with the boys at the bunker, she had perfected the amount of creamer and cinnamon she needed to add to make it taste just like this coffee they had had once in a small cafe in the middle-of-nowhere, Mississippi. When she finally figured out the right balance she had raced to Sam’s room and demanded he try it to be sure it really did taste right, and when he agreed with astonishment that it was --in fact-- just as good, they had celebrated the triumph with cutesy flirtation that lead to them setting their cups to the side and folding up back underneath his sheets. She had made their coffee like that every time from that point on.

But in Sam’s memory of that place, Liv hadn’t been with him when he had ordered that drink at the coffee house in Mississippi. She hadn’t ever traveled on the road with him to cases across the country. And she certainly hadn’t been living with him and Dean, waking up and bringing him coffee just the way he likes it for the past five months.

So it was a puzzle piece in his hand, not a cup of coffee. And it was a piece that didn’t fit anywhere. Just like Liv herself, and everything she did or said. The look she gave him when she entered the room that morning, a tender expression full of emotion for him that he didn’t understand or know how to respond to, sent a sharp pain through his chest, but he couldn’t trace the feeling back to anything. The loaded silences and the lingering gazes were visceral, he couldn’t help but stare because he genuinely loved the sight of her, but nothing about her made sense to him. He saw a stranger but part of him accepted her as something familiar. Sam felt like his heart and mind were wrestling parts of themselves every time he interacted with Liv.

Liv leaned forward, studying the laboring furrow in Sam’s brow. His eyes darted over her as he was very clearly trying to figure her out. It almost gave Liv hope that he seemed confused. If there was something about her that confused him, maybe there were remnants of who she was left in his mind somewhere. “Are you okay?” she asked, extending her arm towards him on the table.

Sam shook his head as if to clear it, “Sorry. Uh, I’m-- I’m fine. This is all just… really--” Exhaustion seemed to drape itself around Sam like a shadow as he searched for a way to describe what he was feeling.

“I know,” Liv muttered, reassuringly. “It’s all--” She made a wavy gesture with her hands to finish her thought.

Sam nodded in agreement. They smiled weakly at one another.

The sound of Castiel turning the pages of his book brought them back to what they were supposed to be doing. He sat silently at the table pretending to ignore the two of them while he read. Liv grabbed the book she had been flipping through and cracked it open again, glancing up every so often at Sam, who kept interrupting his research to study his cup of coffee, smelling it, staring into it, then sipping at it until the cup was finally empty.

Sifting through the old dusty books wasn’t easy, especially after the mess Dean had made of them a few days before. Cas and Sam had just picked them off the floor and heaved them onto the table in strange formations up and down the table's length. It was clear from how the books were scattered on the floor after they met Dean’s wrath that Kevin had set them in some sort of order at some point while going through them, looking for a helpful weapon. However, not Castiel, Sam, or Liv could figure out what that order was. So they just kept grabbing book after book in whatever order their hands reached at them. Two cups of coffee later, Liv sat with a big brown one caked with dust, skimming a bit faster than she had been at the start, as the caffeine began to kick in, when she happened upon something unexpected.

 _“Oh!”_ she exclaimed, snapping straight up in the chair, dropping the heavy book flat on the table. Sam and Cas jolted up from their books. “Oh, god!” Liv reiterated as her eyes scanned across the pages. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Sam stood, but then his eyes fell to the pages of Liv’s book. Her fingers traced over little colored pieces of papers hanging off of the brittle pages of the book. The writing on each note was in Kevin’s hand-writing. Sam’s hands came down on the notes from across the table, too, folding them back to read all they had to say, the last messages to them Kevin had ever sent.

“Right before we left him--” Liv breathed, flipping the pages to uncover as many of Kevin’s Easter eggs as possible, “he was going to look for a spell or sigil or something that could be used to find or fight the angel.”

“This must be the stack he was able to get through,” said Sam nearly just to himself, coming to Liv’s side around the table and slamming open the other books that had been sitting under the big brown one full of Kevin’s notes. Each one of those had pages flagged, too.  

Liv kept skimming over each note, feverishly. Tears still brimmed over the side of her eyes. “He also said -- _I remember now!_ \-- he said he was going to look for a way to recover memories,” --her voice caught in her throat as emotion caught up with her-- “he said just in case…and that everything was going to be okay.” She wiped the tears away from her face. So much had happened since then it seemed like years ago, not just days, but even so, she couldn’t believe she had forgotten.

Sam looked over at her solemnly. He lifted his hand like he might lay it on her shoulder, but he let it fall back to his side, awkwardly. He didn’t know if he should try to comfort this stranger, but he felt like he really, really wanted to. And because she was a stranger, he wasn’t certain if that would be okay to do in the first place. But then, of course it would be okay because one of the reasons she seemed to be in such despair was because he couldn’t remember the relationship they apparently were in…. Though, he’s the reason Kevin was dead, and that’s why she was currently crying. How could he comfort her? You can’t comfort someone for something you caused, can you? Not if it’s something you can’t fix or undo, no matter how guilty or sorry you are. Wouldn’t it just make things seem worse?

Sam felt a hand on his shoulder and realized his thoughts had run away with him, again. It seemed he couldn’t do anything this morning without that happening. Liv’s glassy eyes stared up at him. He tried to straighten his face out to look less tormented, but it was no use.

“Sam?” A single tear strayed from Liv’s eye.

He could barely take the concerned expression on her face. It made him feel ashamed. He couldn’t explain why. He couldn’t lie and say he was fine, either. He couldn’t do anything but blink at her as his brow contorted into a pained expression, as the guilt seemed to fill his lungs. It was suffocating, and even looking away from her concern meant Sam saw a sea of colored notes in front of him, made by a boy who had worked tirelessly trying to find a way to _help_ him, but whose efforts were cut short _because_ of him.

He shook his head to try to clear it, bringing his hand up to his forehead. He had watched so many people die, he had been the reason so many people had died, he had watched those around him suffer so frequently, he had so often been the reason for that, too, and would it never end? Could he never be allowed to let it end?

He felt Liv’s grip on his arm tighten. “Sam, it’s not your fault.”

Sam broke away from his distant stare to look down at her, slightly caught off guard that she seemed to know what he was thinking. She raised her eyebrow at him. She was able to look stern and concerned at the same time. It was strange. Like she was used to having to be tender yet firm with him often, something you have to do with a person who needs to be convinced as often as Sam does that he should value himself more and blame himself less.

He let himself slide into the chair in front of him, looking straight forward, unfocused, so he wouldn’t see her face or the scribbles from Kevin. Liv followed suit, sitting back in her seat, next to him. She scooted cautiously closer to his side, studying his face for a second. Since he didn’t remember her, he didn’t know that she knew all his tells, so he was letting them all show.

Sam with his memory intact had learned ways to fake it better around Liv because she was a lot more intuitive and paid exponentially more attention to him than anyone else in his life. But this Sam with the damaged memory, not so much. He didn’t have any reference to what Liv could see when she looked at him, no idea that she could read the way he pressed his lips into a hard line to steady his breath, that this specific crinkle above his eyes across his brow meant he was much more upset than he was trying to let on, that the tension he held in his shoulders because of the way he clenched his left hand into a ball to hold his thumb into his palm told her just how difficult it was for him to keep it together, most likely because he felt guilt. He didn’t realize she could read these things like they were words on a page, so he didn’t think to hide them from her.

“I know you don’t know me,” she said softly, sadness ringing subtly in each syllable. “But I know _you_. I’ve known you for a really long time. What happened to Kevin was _not_ your fault.”

He looked at her, sadly, from the sides of his eyes. He was unconvinced that he should bear no blame, though he _was_ convinced that she seemed to know him pretty well. And somehow this comforted him, knowing that at some point in whatever the hell she and him had shared, she tried to figure him out and he had allowed it, to some degree. This thought put him a little at ease for the first time all day.

To save time, he nodded at her shortly, regardless of the fact that he didn’t feel blameless. Liv did the tender but firm eyebrow thing again. Without thinking, Sam nodded with more virility to appease her.

“Shall we see what Kevin found, then?” Castiel asked, peering over Liv’s shoulders at the ten open books covered in little post-it notes.

“Yeah, let’s do it.”

Now that they knew the best place to dig, triple-teaming Kevin’s stack helped narrowing down the spells and sigils that were most useful go a lot more quickly. Every so often, Liv would come across a post-it that would make her laugh a little sadly, either because of how Kevin had phrased the scribble or because of the way he tended to address himself in his own notes.

Sam was thankful Liv and Cas were tearing through the notes quickly enough that he didn’t have to sift through as many books as they did. It got more and more difficult with every turn of the page for him to read what Kevin had written. He was examining his own crime scene, piecing together the last few hours of his own victim’s life, a victim that was working to save _him_ at the time of his murder. Pretty soon, Sam’s pace had slowed to a complete hault. He couldn’t get past the sick feeling that grew inside him. Even if he had happened upon the perfect spell in those notes that had actually said _“Hey, Sam, this is how to find Gadreel, good luck!”_ Sam was pretty sure he would have still overlooked it.

“Are you done with this?” Sam asked Liv, reaching for her coffee cup and sliding his book away. He grabbed her empty cup and his before she could answer.

“Yeah, thanks,” Liv responded, even though Sam had already made his way towards the long hall that lead to the kitchen. She leaned over to look at Sam’s progress to find he had only skimmed about three pages with notes on them. “Cas,” she said, quietly, nudging the angel in the shoulder. He looked up, blinking like he honestly hadn’t noticed anything going on in the room aside from what he was reading. “Split Sam’s stack with me.”

He obediently shoved half of Sam’s books towards Liv and scooted the other half into his own pile. “It doesn’t seem like Sam has made much progress, anyway.”

“Well, I’m not sure he should be reading through all this.” Liv waved her hand at the pile of post-its now on the table from spells they had ruled out.

“Oh,” Castiel tone was of dawning. “Yes, I didn’t consider… Perhaps that’s why he felt the need to take a break to the kitchen.”

Amusement was the only thing that kept Liv from rolling her eyes. “Yeah, Cas. I think you’re right.”

It seemed Sam left the room to not only wash their cups, but possibly also the rest of the dishes in the kitchen for how long it took him to return, but Liv was actually glad. It gave her and Castiel a chance to overtake their own piles in order to start in on Sam’s. When he returned, to Liv’s surprise, with two fresh new cups of coffee, there was nothing left for him to go through. Castiel was writing out a list of the sigils and spells they had left flagged while Liv worked on her last few pages. Then it was time to decide what they could do with their findings.

“Don’t you think this one would be best?” Sam asked Castiel, pointing his finger over the list. “According to the notes, it seems like it would be the most accurate, bringing us closest to where Gadreel is actually located.”

Castiel skimmed back over what the spell entailed before commenting. _“Mmm,”_ he grunted. “Possibly. It requires grace, like we discussed. But the process of extracting it will be painful.”

“Whatever it takes,” Sam replied without concern. “I can handle it. “

Castiel lifted his eyes to Sam’s face. “Sam, it’s not just pain. This spell requires a large amount. This could weaken you greatly. And after everything your body was put through last night--”

“Cas,” Sam interjected. “Will this work?”

Castiel glanced at Liv. He wasn’t sure what to say because he knew the spell would actually work but only at great cost. While Sam was willing to give whatever the spell took, Castiel knew Liv wouldn’t be. He wasn’t sure what the right move was here. His pause gave way for Liv to speak up.

“It could weaken him, but does that mean--?”

“If we aren’t careful and if we push the limits too far, Sam could die.”

“Then we’ll only extract just what we need,” said Sam, simply, skimming over the list of spells one more time. “Wait, what are these over here?” He pointed at a small bunch of scribbles Liv had jotted down off to the side of the list.

“Oh,” Liv’s voice grew small. “Just an idea or two Kevin had about how to reverse memory damage. I couldn’t really understand it all, but I wrote the page numbers.”

“Memory damage is a messy thing,” Castiel mused, skimming over the scribbles with narrowed eyes. “I’m interested to see what tricks Kevin came up with…”

“Anything useful?” Liv asked, glancing sideways at Sam. She was terrified to hear Castiel confirm anything about Kevin’s last ditch effort to save Sam’s memories. If Cas nixed them it would truly mean Sam’s memories were completely lost and there was no recovering them. She absolutely wasn’t ready to face that finality. If she could hold out hope, even misguided hope, she wouldn’t have to completely accept the reality of a world where she was forever a stranger to Sam.

“Impressive,” remarked Castiel as he read over the spells.

Liv’s eye lightened and for a second she felt an actual flutter of hope. _“What?”_ She leaned around Castiel’s shoulder, clinging to his arm. Sam crowded up behind them and peered over at the book, too.

“It seems this spell doesn’t deal explicitly with memory damage, but with angel powers in general. If done correctly, it seems it’s supposed to erase any damage an angel has cast on an individual.”

“Like an angel backspace key?” Sam asked.

Castiel turned the page over to continue reading, bringing the book right up to his nose. “Not quite. It’s much more complicated than that.”

“But could it work?” Liv tried not to sound too desperate.

Castiel glanced up from the book. “Yes. Yes it could work. But it also requires the angel’s grace. And on top of that, as we undo the damage done to Sam’s memory, we would also be undoing the healing Gadreel cast on Sam’s body. More than likely he would end up in the state he was in before Dean met Gadreel.”

“So, comatose,” Sam added, sardonically.

“Possibly, yes.”

“Possibly?” questioned Liv. “But we don’t know for sure?”

“If we could control how far back the spell reached, we might be able to only undo what Gadreel has done in the last two days. However, there is no way to know how to harness this power. And we only have one try with the grace and we're not even sure we can extract enough for the tracking spell.”

Liv’s heart sank and her face fell. Castiel wondered if he said something wrong.

Sam turned to Liv. “Look,” he said, scrunching his brow the way Liv always loved. She fixated on it. She already knew what he was going to say, anyways. “I want my memories back. I do. I want to take back everything that asshole took from me, but,” --he ran his hand up over his forehead and back through his hair, a gesture of true distress-- “I wouldn’t feel right about doing that instead of doing the spell that can actually get that asshole caught and dealt with. I’ve got a debt to pay. Kevin died by these hands. I owe it to him to do the tracking spell.”

Liv nodded weakly. Afterall, Kevin was Sam’s friend while she was no one. And she couldn’t argue against an opportunity for Sam to relieve some of the guilt he was feeling. “No, that makes sense,”  she muttered.

The expression on her face made it feel like a weight had been lowered down onto Sam’s chest. His hands twitched as his instincts told him to reach out to her.

“I’m sorry--”

“Don’t be, it’s okay. I get it.”

Castiel looked between the two. Nothing seemed okay. Humans were always saying things were okay when they were not.

 

\---------

 

Liv was still surprised that there were parts of the bunker she didn’t know about, like the infirmary. As she entered the room behind Castiel and Sam, clutching the spell book against her chest, she looked around questioning if this was a proper place for medical procedures to take place. Sam unbuttoned and hung his overshirt on the back of an old chair in the corner of the room and hopped up on the medical table. Liv was uncomfortable with how buoyant Sam seemed about all of this.

“There’s a set in there,” Sam directed Castiel, pointing to a cabinet. Castiel opened it and took out a case of medical tools. He laid its contents out on the counter next to the medical table, including a large syringe, which he picked up to use first.

At the sight of the syringe in Castiel’s hand, Liv unexpectedly had a physical reaction. A wave of nausea hit like a wall and the room started to spin very slightly. She grabbed the side of the table to steady herself, breathing in slow and deep, trying to sidestep an anxiety attack. Castiel sat the syringe down and came swiftly to her side, taking the book from her.

“Are you certain you want to witness this, after everything you saw last night?”

“Yes,” Liv replied with a bitter edge. She took another deep breath. “I’m not Dean. I’m not going to hide in the hallway.” Castiel and Sam exchanged a look. This Sam had never heard her talk about his brother this way. For a very short second Liv wondered if it would be okay, but then decided she didn’t care. She straightened up as the beginning of her panic attack began to subside. _False alarm, thank God._ “Just because I can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not happening.”

“I understand you are angry,” Castiel replied. “But must you be so hard on him?”

“Um, _absolutely_ ,” Liv replied, viciously. “Because nobody else will be! Especially not himself.”

“He left because he thinks he’s poison--”

“He left because it’s _easier_ , Castiel," she growled. "He left because he doesn’t want to face what he created here.” She pointed between Sam and the syringe.

Castiel paused to appraise her. Sam leaned away from this conversation, slightly stunned, as if the heat of it was burning his eyes.

“I love Dean,” Liv continued in a tone of resentment. “And I… I know he’s feeling pain. But he’s not poison on _accident_. It’s not like these things happen out of no where. We can all trace this back to something! It’s not a fucking mystery. He makes choices, _bad_ choices! And then pretends he had _no choice_.” She paused to reel herself back in, heeding the wide eyes staring at her from the angel and Sam. “Things like this will never stop happening if Dean doesn’t face that and own it. And if people who profess to care about him keep making excuses for him. So, yes. I _‘must be hard on him.’_ I will not forget this, and I am not electing to sit out for it.”

“Very well.” Cas nodded curtly.

“Besides,” she finished with a derisive chuckle, dragging the chair in the corner over to sit next to Sam on the medical table. “If I can sit through what I saw Crowley do to Sam, I can handle this, no problem...”

The expression on Sam’s face after Liv’s mini-tirade would have made her smile if she wasn’t in such a sad place. It had taken Liv a long time to get Sam to see a lot of the flaws in the way Dean treated him and to recognize that he deserves better. It had been gradual, and on top of that, Liv and Dean had their own unique love/hate relationship they had been building on for years. This kind of rant was certainly not something Liv would have done first thing out of the gate with the Winchesters, so she couldn’t imagine what was going through Sam’s head at that moment. But he didn’t seem upset with her. He just seemed a little bewildered. Maybe she had given this new Sam something to think about.

“Alright,” Castiel said, handing Liv a metal bowl for the spell. “Let’s get started.”

 

\---------

 

“Cas, don’t,” Sam commanded fraily, gripping the syringe hanging out of his neck. “Do not take it out.”

Castiel and Liv exchanged a worried glance. “Sam, you aren’t going to last much longer at this pace.”

“This isn’t worth it,” Liv pleaded. “There has to be another way.”

“No!” Sam exclaimed. “My life’s not worth any more than anyone else’s. Not yours, not Dean’s, not Kevin’s. Please. Please, help me do this one thing right...”

Liv searched Cas’ face. He shook his head gravely at her. They didn’t have enough grace for the tracking spell and it was clear they weren’t going to be able to extract enough before it was too late for Sam. His breaths came in heavy rasps, sweat glistening off his skin and soaking through his undershirt, blood starting to ooze from his nose and mouth. Liv brought his lips down to his temple, smoothing back his hair aware from his brow. She knew he wanted to make up for Kevin’s death, but this was just not the way to do it.

Without warning, Castiel broke his hand free of Sam’s grip and pulled the syringe from Sam’s skin, then placed two fingers on Sam’s forehead. Sam shot up off the table a second later with a confused look on his face.

“Cas, what the fuck!”

“I healed your wounds. You should be fine.”

Liv wiped her hands over her face, relieved.

“What about the grace?”

“It’s gone. All we have left is here.” Cas held up the syringe not even half way full of sparkly wisps.

“Is that enough?” Sam scooted off of the table and stood to his full height. His anger showed all over, but especially in the tension of his shoulders.

But Castiel did not cower, back. He was unintimidated. “We’ll just have to see,” he replied.

“Sam,” Liv caught him by the arm so he’d turn back to her. There was sweat on her brow, too. He knew it shouldn’t have surprised him to see that she had suffered watching him suffer, but it still did. “It wasn’t worth it. You aren’t going to accomplish anything by killing yourself to track Gadreel down. Kevin wouldn’t have wanted that.”

Sam didn’t completely agree with that. It would accomplish balancing some things out. And if he was dead, his body would never be used to hurt anyone ever again. But his aim when he started this morning wasn’t to die. He wasn’t sure how he had gotten to this point, where his mind was arguing against people who were trying to remind him he should be alive.

“Olivia is right, you can do a lot more good alive. And moreover, there is nothing you can accomplish by dying that would be worth your death. Nothing is worth losing you.”

Both Sam and Liv blinked at Castiel. Neither had ever heard him talk like this to Sam before.

“I was human for a time,” Cas continued. “It changed the way I view those around me and I think I can relate to how you feel, Sam.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“The only person who has screwed things up more consistently than you, is me. And now I know what guilt--”

“Cas, dude,” Liv waved her hands in a shut-up-now gesture behind Sam. “You need to work on your delivery.”

She saw Sam’s shoulders shudder with soft laughter.

Castiel blinked innocently at them. “I only meant that--”

“I know what you meant,” Sam interjected, glancing back at Liv with a smirk.

“The ends don’t always justify the means, not anymore. That’s what being human taught me. I won’t watch you die just for a chance at Gadreel. You are worth much more than that.”

Sam nodded.

“Liv, why don’t you open the book to the proper page and I’ll go get the rest of the stuff we’ll need to try the spell.” With that, the angel left the room.

This was the first time the two of them had actually been alone since Sam lost his memories and it definitely felt charged, but neither was sure what it was charged with. An awkward silence filled the room for just a second before they smiled at one another, then Liv went to set up the book, setting the syringe and the bowl to the side so Castiel would have space to work. She felt Sam come stand behind her to look over everything. She really wanted to turn right around and throw her arms around his waist to hug him. She had seen him nearly die twice in the last twenty-four hours, and the self control she had been exercising to control her affection impulse was pretty much at a breaking point. Him standing so near to her was not helping.

She cleared her throat and turned her head slightly to the side. “Do you feel alright? Physically I mean?”

“Yeah, Cas really did heal me up. I think I’m fine.”

“Good.” She shifted to the side so she could turn around without being pinned against the table, though she wouldn’t have minded. She had become overwhelmed with the desire to wrap herself up in him. She just wanted to touch him and feel safe with him for the first time in weeks.

“Are _you_ okay?”

Liv was surprised by the question. Maybe her distress was showing on her face. “Um-- yeah, I’m okay.”

Sam cocked his head to the side, his brow wrinkle skeptically, his kind eyes burrowing into hers. It was the way he  _always_ looks at her when he knew she was putting up a front. He was the same Sam she was so in love with, he just didn’t know it. Liv felt tears in her eyes staring up at him, so she was quite thankful when Castiel returned at that exact moment. The tension hanging in the room broke as the clueless angel set the spell up, read a few incantations from the book aloud, then sat and stared at the bowl expectantly. Sam and Liv crowded around him and the bowl to watch. A small puff of smoke floated to the ceiling from the grace and then dissipated.

“Was that supposed to happen?” Liv inquired.

“There wasn’t enough grace.”

Sam sighed.

“We can find him another way,” Liv said, trying to sound optimistic.

“No, no, you guys are right,” Sam agreed. “And you were right about .. well, everything else, too.” A smile creeped across his face, then he unexpectedly leaned over and grabbed Castiel into a hug. Watching Castiel stiffen awkwardly then be coached as to how to properly return a hug actually made Liv laugh. _Genuinely_ laugh. It was a little like catching a second wind.

When Sam let him go, Castiel nodded at him and Liv awkwardly, then shuffled towards the door. They watched him go, chuckling.

“Well that was adorable,” Liv teased.

“Yeah?” Sam smirked, stepping toward her.

“Definitely, I think he might have a crush on you.”

“Maybe I’ll consider asking him out.”

Liv laughed genuinely, again. A pause. Two smiles. Then Liv was being crushed into a hug, too. Sam’s shirt was damp from sweat, but she didn’t care. She gripped him as tight as her strength would allow and breathed him in. She felt his hand come up and stroke the back of her hair. Completely by accident, tears sprang from her eyes, getting mascara on the front of his undershirt. She immediately started wiping them away before they broke apart.

She tried to play it cool, like she hadn’t just cried directly on him, but he knew. As she finished wiping her eyes, she felt his fingers under her chin to tilt her head up toward him. He smiled sadly down at her and it made her bottom lip tremble. She gave up trying to hide that she was crying.

“You’re no more okay than I am, Liv.”

She shook her head. Words weren’t a thing for her at the time.

He pulled her back into a hug.

 

\---------

 

“I was able to salvage quite a bit of the grace from the spell,” Castiel declared. The three of them decided to end their day back in the library. Sam was doing some sort of research on his laptop in one of the squishy chairs by the bookshelves, Liv had her feet kicked up watching a show with her earbuds plugged into her computer at the long table, while Castiel had been messing with remnants of the tracker spell for the last several hours.

Both Liv and Sam sat their computers aside and turned to look at Cas at this announcement. He held up a vial full of a wispy glow.

“If either of you wanted to try the ‘backspace’ spell, as Sam put it, we may still be able to.”

The two came over to Castiel to peer into the vial.

“So this spell may not need as much of the angel’s grace to work?” asked Sam.

“We can’t know until we try it, but it’s a possibility. There’s a connection between an angel and his or her grace. Gadreel is far off, and the farther away, the stronger the spell would have to be to track him. But with this spell,” --Castiel pointed back to the book with the confusing recipe-- “we have what we need to undo right here. My theory is we won’t need as much. It could work.”

Liv sighed, grabbing the vial from Castiel’s hand and holding it up to the light. It was hard to believe just this little bit of shit in a glass cup was what caused Sam to nearly have the life sucked out of him earlier that day. Could she sit and watch it happen to him again? And for what? So her boyfriend would like her again? The risk sounded really stupid to her when she thought about it that way. She set vial down, turning to Sam.

“The whole point of getting that goddamn angel out of you was to get you back as whole as possible. You’re here now. You’re healthy. You’re in one piece and you’re yourself again. I don’t think it’s worth risking you going back into a coma just for me.”

Sam nodded along as he processed through her words.

“Agreed,” Castiel said. “It is quite a risk to take.”

The candor of the angel never ceased to sting Liv at unexpected times. She let out an exasperated sigh, then said, “Okay! Well, I’m going to bed.”

“‘Night,” Sam replied, with a small smile.

“Goodnight, Olivia.”

“‘Night, Cas.” And she came up behind him in the chair on her way out of the room, looping her arm around his neck from behind, and gave him a little squeeze. “And thanks for… everything you did today.”

He was even more awkward than when Sam had hugged him. “It was-- you’re, don’t mention-- nothing... welcome--” Liv giggled under her breath as she walked down the hall to her room and closed the door.

Finishing up two or three shows on her laptop didn’t make her any more sleepy than she had been when she first returned to her room. She hadn’t gone to bed because she was physically tired. She went because she couldn’t fake being okay for one more minute, and the finality of ruling out the only spell that might work was too much.

She pulled her earbuds out of her ears and pushed her laptop off to the side, then collapsed over on her pillow, next to where her cell phone was lying. Dean hadn’t replied all day, but she still opened the text conversation and kept staring at it expectantly. She didn’t know what she wanted from Dean. Anything he could possibly send her in a text would only make her angry, but she still watched her phone like a word from Dean might come at any minute.

As she laid there, tapping the screen every three minutes so the screen wouldn’t dim and shut off, the stillness and quiet of the bunker really hit her. She was used to hearing at least someone somewhere in the bunker. Like Dean and his heavy footsteps trudging around with no concept of how noisey he was actually being, or Kevin and his music that she could hear through the wall when he would take a break from scribing to play the out-of-tune violin Liv had asked her grandpa to dig out of his attic, or Sam knocking lightly on the door just before he went to bed to say goodnight, which was his way of seeing if it was okay for him to stay the night in her room.

But now when she settled in the bed and listened for something on the other side of her door, she heard nothing.

A new kind of sadness washed over her as the emptiness of the huge complex consumed her. It was the most alone she had ever felt. Tears filled her eyes, and for the first time all day, she let them fall without a second thought. And just as she settled into a pretty epic cry, she heard shuffling outside her door, causing her to jolt straight up in her bed. Soon after, she heard a light knock.

“Sam?” she blurted out, before she could catch herself. She checked the clock. It was 1 AM.

“Yeah,” he replied, though he sounded unsure. “Uh, is it okay if I come in? For just a second?” She scrambled to wipe her face once again and smooth her hair down to look semi-presentable, but halfway through she gave up.

“Yeah, of course!”

The door cracked open just a sliver and she saw half his face peer in at her from the hallways. She sat cross-legged in the center of her bed.

“I saw the light under the door and figured you were still awake--” He creeped the door open a little bit more.

“Yeah,” she said, breathlessly. “Yeah, I can’t sleep.” He hung right at the thresh hold of her room.

“Me neither.”

“You can come _in_ , Sam.”

He slid in and closed the door, but then leaned against it so he was still pretty much in the same spot as before.

“But… you don’t _have_ to--”

“No, it’s not that. I just feel... I don’t know what level of… comfort you have with me, er, we have with each other. I just don’t want to make you uncomfortable--”

Liv cocked her eyebrow at him. “I trust you. It’s really okay. You could even venture to sit down next to me, believe it or not. I _probably_ won’t get scared by that.”

He rolled his eyes with smile and came to sit at the foot of her bed. The charge was there again, but it was as equally nebulous as the first time. Liv wanted to ask what he was doing here but she didn’t want him to feel like she wasn’t glad he was.

“Er, is that,” Sam pointed at Liv. “Is that my shirt?”

“Oh!” Liv looked down without thinking, even though she knew exactly what shirt she was wearing. It was an incredibly plaid thing that had been trained into being a nightgown and fit nicely around her body as such, though it had once traveled the nation with Sam as shirt. “Yeah, it is. I’ve been sleeping in it for so long, I forgot.”

After another awkward silence where Liv searched his face questioningly, Sam sighed. “Sorry…”

“For?”

“I don’t know, I saw that you were still awake and I just knocked on your door, I don’t think I even had a reason to--”

Liv’s eyes widened.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she replied. “It’s just you do this. You’ve done this, before.”

“Come by your room with nothing to talk about and stare at you awkwardly?”

“Well, no, but you would come by my room to say goodnight the nights I’d go to sleep before you. You’d knock like you just did, even though you knew I would let you in.”

“And I’d stay the night.”

Liv nodded.

“Because we’re _together_.”

Liv shrugged and nodded again.

Sam’s eyebrows nearly collided in confusion as distress overtook his face. He shook his head as his eyes darted over the comforter, like he was searching for an answer there.

“Sam?”

“It’s like parts of you are here, but not really,” he explained pointing to his temple. “He erased my memories, but not my habits. I feel like I know you, but I don’t know how. It’s such a bizarre sensation.”

Liv couldn’t help but be comforted by this, but she immediately felt bad because of how confused and upset it made Sam. Every time it seemed he was remembering something he couldn’t remember, the struggle showed all over his face.

“Should we not talk about--?”

“No, no,” Sam turned abruptly back to her. “No we should. Tell me something else.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

She faltered for a second trying to pick a memory off the top of her head. “Um, one time last year, you and Dean went on a hunt just the two of you while I was staying over at the bunker, so I thought I’d surprise you guys by cleaning up because the place was a mess, but I also wanted to try the sound system on the intercom. So I set up my iPod to play on the microphone while I cleaned, but you guys got home a lot earlier than I expected, so you both walked in on me performing ‘Sugar Daddy’ from Hedwig and the Angry Inch while vacuuming. And the music was literally everywhere in the entire bunker because it was on the intercom. I’ve never seen Dean look so confused in my life.”

“Seriously?” Sam laughed.

Liv nodded, smiling through the fingers of her hand that was covering her face. Of all the memories she could have told him, she had landed on that?

“What else? Tell me more. How did we meet?”

“A case in San Francisco about three years ago.”

“Three _years?_ " Sam looked shocked. "And… like, how did we end up…?” He gestured between himself and her.

“Oh, it was months and months later.”

“And I asked you out or what?”

“No,” Liv chuckled.

“Yeah, doesn’t sound like something I’d do.”

“Well, you didn’t. It just .. happened.”

“Oh.” Sam straightened up as his eyes widened a bit. At first his cheeks flushed with playful embarrassment, but then his brows pulled together again and he looked stricken, staring into her face. “And I love you?” he asked.

She wasn’t expecting this question and it tore at her. “Yeah.” Her voice cracked. “You do, or you did. You told me just last week.”

He nodded slowly like he was being told very particular instructions. “And do you love me?” he continued.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Very much.”

“I knew that."

“Because Cas told you this morning,” Liv suggested, ironically.

“Well, yeah," Sam snickered, "he did. But no. That’s not how I knew. I didn’t believe him at first, not because I thought he was lying, it just didn’t make sense.”

“Did all my crying convince you?” she quipped. She kept trying to keep the mood light because if she didn't she was afraid she'd cry _again_.

“It helped,” Sam replied, sincerely. “But, I don’t know, I just _felt_ it.” Frustration flashed across his face. “I felt what he took from me.”

Liv scooted towards Sam and placed her hand soothingly on his. He curled his fingers around hers. “I’m right here, Sam. He didn’t take how I feel about you away. We can figure this out.”

Sam nodded. He wasn’t sure how, but the way Liv talked to him made him feel like maybe they really could. She made things seem more optimistic. There was nothing like feeling that someone was unconditionally in your corner. It was strange to miss something you couldn’t remember experiencing. Had he felt this way for the last three years that Liv had been a part of his life? His memory was full of pain, guilt, anguish, and let down after let down. How different had his actual experiences been if she was a part of them? He wanted to know the answer, but if he couldn’t get it, maybe the future would be brighter than the past he could remember, if she went forward with him.

“I better let you get to sleep,” he said softly, with one more squeeze of her hand. Liv disappointedly watched him go. He turned back when he reached the door with a heart-melting smile. “Goodnight, Liv.”

“Goodnight, Sam.”

She didn’t fall asleep for quite a while.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song pairing: I Need My Girl - The National

The music swelled around Liv as she moved in rhythm with it around the open stage. Being classically trained had always affected the way she danced in more contemporary pieces, but half the time it was why she was cast in dancing-centric roles. Her instructors and directors didn’t complain about her style too often.

Dancing wasn’t her favorite thing about theater, but it was the thing she was best at, and it always took her out of the moment even as she performed in front of an audience. When her dance solo came up, the spotlights would disappear, other actors in her scene were blotted out, and the only thing that lingered in her mind was the sound of the music and feel of the air around her as she cut through with sharp precision.

She had always memorized every movement, every lift, the feel of the song coursing through her as it manipulated her body to the degree that it was second nature. It was effortless and easy because she made sure she rehearsed until it hurt, and then beyond until it didn’t anymore. Until her body almost moved on its own, without her brain having to anticipate hitting her marks or cues. It just was, she was, the music was, the dance was all one and it took her out of everything.

The sweetness of the inevitable high that comes during a nearly perfect performance was surging through her veins as the crescendo of her favorite song of the show began to build. She spun elegantly with her arms in the air like she had done hundreds of times before, but suddenly she felt herself slam into what she could only imagine was a brick wall that had sprung up out of nowhere. The wall made a sharp grunt at the impact.

Liv was torn from her memory of the stage and zapped back to the dank training room that was for all intents and purposes used as a gym in the bunker. The spotlight faded into the yellow fluorescent lights of the gym as she jerked her earbuds from her ears. She found herself caught in between two steel arms.

Sam’s hands gripped Liv’s shoulders as he tried to steady her and himself from their collision. He stared down at her with an expression that was equal parts amused, surprised, and confused.

“Oh my _God_ you scared the shit out of me!” Liv exclaimed in between ragged breaths, face reddening not just from the early morning workout that had segued into the old dance routine Sam had apparently walked in on.

“Sorry!” Sam replied, hopping back to give her space to recover.

Liv laughed a bit more shrill than she meant to. “No, it’s okay, I-- I just didn’t expect....”

“That was really impressive, though,” Sam smirked, twirling his his finger in the air, tracing the route Liv had taken in her routine around the room.

“Ha, _ha_ ,” Liv returned, ironically. She was still catching her breath from the dance and the scare. Her auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail with only a few strands falling around her face. A few clung to the sweat on her forehead. She fiddled with the tape wrapped around her hands as she considered how she must look in her baggy tank and basketball shorts. She wiped at her face nervously. After a nearly sleepless night and laying awake with her mind racing all morning, she had decided to take it out on the punching bag downstairs, but when a song from her days in college came on, she let the music take her back. She liked how she could still get lost in it and nearly forget whatever had her restlessly performing. However, this time she had literally slammed right back into it.

“No I’m serious!” Sam assured her. “I didn’t know you dance.” An awkward silence threatened to creep in for just a moment until Sam caught himself. “Uh, or… so I did know that you dance, but…?”

Liv waved her hand at his attempts dismissively with a tired grin. How could he know? Of course he didn’t know. “Yeah, I went to a drama school in New York. Dance was my thing.”

He looked at her the same way he had the first time she told him that, slightly surprised and slightly impressed, but there was also something new there. Just a twinge of pain and frustration was hidden in the lines on his face around his smile and the flecks of gold in his eyes. It became more and more apparent the longer he let his expression linger on her instead of trying to fill the pause with more talking.

Liv picked up the slack. “What are you doing down here so early, it has to be, like what? 6 o’clock in the morning?”

“Just about,” Sam replied, snapping out of his stare. “I woke up and couldn’t fall back to sleep so I came into the library. Cas said he saw you come down here about an hour ago.”

“I forget Cas doesn’t sleep.”

“Apparently none of us do.”

“Touche.”  

Another awkward pause.

“Well, I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” apologized Sam. “I just came down to--”

“No, it’s okay--”

“--see what you were up to and maybe--”

“--I was nearly done anyways--”

“--since we were both up, discuss the possibility--”

“--and I was just about to go back to my room and shower--”

“--of trying the remaining grace on that ‘undo’ spell.”

“--so I--wait! _What_?” Suddenly making awkward conversation didn’t seem to be that big of a priority. “Castiel said it’s too big a risk! It’s not worth it.”

“It is to me.” There was a stubbornness in Sam’s voice that would have made Liv smile had she not been so concerned. She was not ready to watch Sam suffer physically a third day in a row.

“I don’t know, man, when an angel says an angel spell may not work like we want it to, maybe that’s a good time to _stop_ almost killing you.”

Sam cocked his eyebrow at her. “You don’t want to try it?”

Liv’s response got caught in her mouth as she considered it. She absolutely wanted Sam’s memories back. The night before was so brutal even as Sam tried to learn about the life they had lived the last few years. It was a sweet taste, but it was not enough and never would be. She would always mourn the loss of their foundation, even if they could build a new one. But the thought of this spell undoing the healing Sam needed to survive was suffocating. She couldn’t say yes because she knew Sam would have nothing to hold him back from once again risking his life to “fix” another situation.

“Sam,” she said feebly. “It’s not that I don’t want you to remember. I just don’t want you to get hurt. Again. And just for me.”

“But it isn’t just for you, Liv.” He stepped towards her, hands gesturing as he spoke. He locked his eyes on hers in an attempt to make her understand. “I want to try the spell. For me. _I_ want to get back what was stolen from me.”

Liv nodded. She couldn’t blame him for that and she certainly couldn’t argue that it wasn’t worth it. Sam had been so, so wronged. She just wished there was another way to go about getting it back that didn’t include him being possibly nearly killed in the process.

“I can’t describe what I felt when I left you last night. I _know_ what I see in my head when I think back on the last three years is a lie, but I can’t see around it. I can’t trust my own mind to tell me the truth.” A painful sadness flashed across his face. “This is what I felt when I thought something was wrong with me before, when I was losing time, when Gadreel was still here.”

“Sam,” Liv whimpered, sadly. She reached out to him and put her hand on his shoulder, one of the gestures of comfort Sam was still not used to.

“But this time we know the answer,” he continued. “I know what’s wrong, I can fix it.”

“I know. I get it. But… Is it worth your life?” Liv’s tone took on the sound of pleading. She was actually afraid of the answer.

“This is isn’t my life,” he proclaimed. “Not really.” He shook his head with conviction. “I’m living based on a projection he put in my head. I want what’s real. If I’m going to be alive, I want to live the life that is actually mine.”

Sam’s eyes searched her face for understanding. His memory lent him no reference to how Liv would react in a situation like this. All he had memories of were of Dean, and Dean would have never been okay with risking Sam’s life again just for some memories. As long as Sam was alive, why did Sam need every single tiny detail back in place?

He could hear Dean’s voice in his head _, “What’s the big deal? So we knocked a few screws loose in the process of savin’ your life. The important thing is you’re okay, Sammy. Drop it, it’s not worth it.”_ Dean wouldn’t care that Sam seeing the world through an incomplete lense would paint everything in his life a slightly different color. That it would start to eat at him and affect everything he did. It wasn’t just a memory he wanted back, this wasn’t frivolity. This was the ability to trust his own perception again, the cornerstone of his sanity. Dean wouldn’t understand. Dean would look at the life he saved, Sam’s life, as owed to him, and he’d tell Sam no. _“You ain’t gonna go kill yourself for one tiny part of your brain after all I went through to save you.”_

But maybe Liv would understand. Everything he knew about her from the last two days told him she could. And if she didn’t really get that part, maybe she would understand that it was still _his_ choice to make, regardless. That it didn’t matter what anyone did to keep him alive, because breathing isn’t all there is to it. He didn’t want to die, not really, but he knew the way his mind continued to betray him every day would eventually drive him crazy. There were things worse than death, and there weren’t many men alive who had experienced as many of those things as Sam Winchester. One he never wanted to have to relive was the inability to trust his own thoughts.

And so he locked his eyes on hers and gave her his most earnest expression because there wasn’t a way to explain why it should be so important to her, but at least she might see why risking it was important to him. Liv sighed. There was no arguing with Sam when he got that tone in his voice, and she knew it. There was nothing she could say to convince him not to risk it, and if she talked him out of it she’d feel terrible forever. The truly selfish thing would be to ask him not to try if that’s the only way he’d feel okay and whole and normal again. Wasn’t that the original goal when she confronted Dean about the angel in the first place?

Liv reached up to run her thumb briefly against Sam’s bristly jawline, her eyes glistening up at him with worry. Sam smiled a relieved smile as his hand came up to cover hers. Their was another pause, but this one wasn’t awkward, and he brought her hand down but didn’t let it go. A faint smile appeared on Liv’s face.

“I’d really appreciate it if eventually we could go a day where I don’t have to worry you might die. Can we try to make that happen sometime soon?”

“Absolutely. Let’s pencil that in.”

 

\--------

 

“Now, you need to be aware,” Castiel warned, “that there is a very real possibility this won’t work at all and may just end up hurting you. Do you understand this?”

Sam nodded impatiently for the fifth time. “Yeah, Cas. I got it.”

“We have no way of knowing exactly how this spell will work until we begin, and once we begin--”

“--Yeah, you said this already, too. _‘Once we begin we cannot start it over.’_ ” Sam delivered the last bit in his best Castiel voice. “I heard you. I got it!”

Castiel sulked a little at being snapped at, however lightly, and skimmed back over the incantation. The grace had already been mixed into the brass bowl from the night before with the rest of the odd ingredients from the recipe and the only thing left to do was just … to do it. Castiel seemed to be stalling in his awkward way. It was pretty clear he wasn’t completely confident in his ability to do this.

Liv, freshly showered and full of coffee, paced around the infirmary, which set Castiel a bit on edge as he reread. She insisted they perform the spell in that room in case something went wrong, Sam would have a place to lay down if he needed and there was medical supplies -- “Though, nothing that could really help us if he he set back to trial-state,” Castiel had pointed out. With a groan she had insisted anyways.

“You’re gonna let us know when to stop, right?” She felt stupid asking that question, but she wouldn’t put it past Sam to keep silent, risking the undoing of Trials healing to see what else Gadreel deleted in his mind.

“Yes,” Sam assured her. He gave her his most sincere eyes. “I promise. If I can tell it’s working--”

“If it’s working,” Castiel interjected, “you will know. You won’t be able to help it.”

“That’s ominous,” Liv croaked.

“No, but that’s good, right?” chirped Sam, legs crossed at the ankle on the medical table. Aside from how cheerful he tried to seem, he looked like a giant child waiting for a checkup. “If there’s no mistaking it, I can’t let it go on for too long.”

“In theory,” Cas grumbled, still scanning over the dusty book. “That’s assuming you will even be able speak during this process.”

Liv stopped her pacing to spin around and face Castiel abruptly. He didn’t look up at her. She turned her distressed expression on Sam. Sam thought she might actually overflow, though he wasn’t sure with what. He hopped off the chair and crossed the room. “Look, guys, it’s fine.” He put a hand on the page Cas was staring at to bring Cas’ attention to him. “I know the risks. We’ve been over and over them. Rehashing them is only going to make it seem worse.” His eyes jumped between the two unconvinced faces. It didn’t seem to matter how upbeat Sam tried to be about this.

“Olivia, take this and stand there,” Castiel directed, handing Liv a metal stirring tool and pointing towards the bowl of ingredients on the counter next to the medical chair. Liv did as she was instructed. “Sam, sit there. You shouldn’t be standing in case you lose the ability to support yourself. The last thing we need is head trauma while we’re trying to retrieve memories.” Sam obeyed, hopping back up on the medical chair and leaning back, though he noted a bit of resentment in Castiel’s voice. “I will read the chant for the spell. There are about five bars I have to repeat.”

“How many times?” Liv asked.

“As far as I can tell, as many times as we need to for Gadreel’s work to be undone. While I do that you must keep the mixture moving. Something about the words being said and the ingredients moving against each other that causes the spell to work. It’s motion and sound and…” Castiel shook his head frustratedly. “Let’s just begin.”

“What should I do?”

“You just sit,” Castiel half barked at Sam. Liv and Sam straightened up at his tone. “Focus on what is happening to your body and mind. Just do your best to tell us when we can stop this.”

Sam gave curt nod.

Castiel glanced over at Liv, inclining his head as a signal to begin, then brought the book close to his face. With a shaky hand, Liv slowly stirred the bowl with the grace and other unsavory ingredients around and around. Castiel’s voice filled the room reciting the incantation. If Liv hadn’t been so stressed out, she may have noted how beautiful it sounded to hear Cas read the Enochian words. She rarely ever got to hear him speak the language.

At first Sam felt nothing and started to get nervous that extracting the grace may have truly been a waste. Then suddenly, he was very warm and the sound of Castiel’s monotone chanting was cut by a ringing in Sam’s ears. The room started to slip out of focus and before he knew it, Sam found himself chained to a chair in a dusty warehouse. Crowley, who was holding bloody metal tools, was arguing with Liv a few feet away from him. The scene played in front of him like an old silent movie. He could almost hear the clicking of the reel, but no sound of what was happening in front of him. Then, without warning, it was like someone kicked the speakers into high gear, and their voices poured into his ears.

 _“You can’t!”_ Liv screamed.

_“Pish posh! Of course I can. Demons can take any vessel they like. I can go into Sam’s head. I can reach him. I can.”_

_“You are not going to possess Saml!”_

Sam’s eyes were wide with terror as he took in the display. He heard Dean agree to allow Crowley to possess him and ask Castiel to burn off his tattoo. Even though the reality he was experiencing was slightly surreal and hollow, Liv’s scream cut through him like a knife. Nothing Sam could do seemed to influence what was playing out in front of him. He wanted to scream objections, break the chains he was in, but no movement or sound he tried to make broke through. As Castiel laid his hand on Sam’s chest to remove his tattoo, Sam’s eyes burrowed into his friend’s face, begging him to stop, but it was like Cas didn’t even see him. In fact, Castiel looked into his face with disgust. 

“Sam?”

He heard his name and it caught him like an anchor. He almost felt himself physically snap as he was jerked out of whatever dream he was in.

“Sam, are you okay?”

The sounds of Castiel’s chants hung around Liv’s concerned voice. Sam shot forward in the chair, sweat across his face. Cas didn’t stop reciting, Liv was still stirring, but they both looked pretty freaked out.

“What happened? You passed out! Do you need us to stop?”

Sam blinked and shook his head. “No, keep going,” he said, his voice shakier than he expected. “I think it’s work--”  

A moment later he found himself back in that warehouse, staring into the face of Crowley who was holding a large, metal pin. Sam had no time to even flinch in surprise before Crowley was digging the pin into Sam’s temple. A silent scream left his lips until he realized there was no pain. He saw Liv sitting behind the King of Hell, face stained with tears.

Crowley came at him with another pin, yammering like a television on mute. It seemed like he was having words with Liv because every so often she’d respond angrily, but he couldn’t make out what either were saying, until like the first time, the sound suddenly got switched on.

_“--So yes, okay. Fine, Crowley, call me a martyr or self righteous or whatever else you think will get at me, but I am not leaving this room because at least someone who claims to give a shit about Sam should be with him while this is going on!”_

There was another bit of exchange between Crowley and Liv until they both turned their attention to Sam, as though he were talking to them. Sam watched Liv’s eyes widen in horror in response to whatever it was he was saying to her. The angel was speaking. Sam tried very hard to control what he was doing to maybe stop the terror he was causing her, but like before nothing he could do made a dent on the scenario surrounding him. As Crowley pushed Liv aside and approached him with new pins for his head, everything blacked out completely.

Flashes of images from a three year gap blinked through Sam’s mind rapidly, seeming to appear for the first time but immediately settling back in, burrowing down into the corners of Sam’s brain where they belonged, where they had been stored originally. Three years worth of experiences and emotions flooding in all at once. Sam wasn’t sure what was happening, but he was certain that his head was actually going to explode. He had felt nothing when the angel deleted them, but regaining them was an overwhelming sensation.

His throat began to feel raspy, and it was only then that he realized he had been screaming in pain. The sound of his own call nearly jerked him from the vision, but instead of shooting up on the medical chair again to the sound of Castiel’s chants, he found himself in another scene. Metatron was there and he was speaking to him. Sam looked down to see a piece of paper with Kevin’s name on it, though it was crossed out. There were two others listed below it.

Sam blinked and he was standing in the library of the bunker across the room from Kevin. It was no use and he knew it, but he tried with all his will not to cross the room and lay his hand on Kevin’s head. He felt his throat ache and knew he must be screaming again. He couldn’t bare to watch his own hands end this kid who had always reminded him so much of himself. Kevin had had a future, a goal, a path that had nothing to do with monsters and saving the world, nothing to do with risking his life and dying for nothing. Sam had always wished there could be another choice for him, that there was a way out, but instead it was Sam that brought about Kevin’s demise. His only way out was to die, and it was truly for nothing. Sam felt the angel to use his body to destroy his friend, but he’d still never forgive himself for it, no matter how out of his own control it was.

But then Sam was in his room at the bunker standing in front of Liv who was cowering away from him against the wall. He put his forearm across her chest and leaned in very close to her face and he could tell by his reflection in her eyes just how sinister he looked to her. His stomach turned and he tasted bile in his mouth as he felt his body threaten her and strike fear to her core, something he would never have chosen to do. He tried to shake his head and soften his expression. He tried to lift his arm from pinning her down. His movements didn’t register. Tears spilled from Liv’s unblinking eyes.

Sam wanted out, he needed to escape the spell, and the more pain he felt in his throat, the louder he figured he must be screaming, which had to mean that he was closer to snapping up in that medical chair and telling Castiel to quit reciting the incantation.

Or not. Again the scene changed without warning and he was sitting on a bed in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere. He recognized this scene. He was on a job with Dean.

“Man, this is gettin’ old. Sam’s starting to question things.” Dean was pacing around in agitation. Sam felt his stomach drop at the mention of his name as though he wasn’t there. “There has to be a way to keep this under wraps without tippin’ him off. When you erase shit in his head, he loses time and he’s starting to notice!”

The hair on the back of Sam’s neck began to stand on end as his brother went on about needing to do a better job at lying. It was odd to hear Dean discuss how to better deceive him _with_ him, and Sam was unprepared for how it made him feel.

Sam had caught Dean lying multiple times, he had called him out on multiple occasions, and he could sift through the excuses and justifications Dean would ultimately throw at him. He was used to that, that was the cycle. But this? This was something he’d never seen before. Dean was in no way trying to pretend that he wasn’t outright lying to Sam and covering it up. He was very purposefully discussing his deceit and trying to improve upon it. At least when Sam had confronted Dean in the past, he had always had this little hope in the back of his mind that maybe Dean didn’t fully realize what he was doing, maybe Sam could buy into some of Dean’s excuses just a bit to soften the blow for his own peace of mind. If Sam could cling to just a fraction of one of Dean’s justification, the betrayal might not sting so much. There was cushion there. But even though Sam was incredibly angry about the angel violation and Dean lying to him for months, actually seeing Dean discuss how to sufficiently cover it up threw this situation in an even harsher light. He watched his own brother work with the angel who had taken so much from him, perfecting his tactics to keep that angel in control of Sam’s body and mind undetected for longer.

No, Sam was not prepared for how this would make him feel. There were no words to describe what it’s like to watch someone debate the best ways to trick you right to your face.

As though someone had sat on the remote, the television in Sam’s head raced through ten other similar scenes, secret meetings Gadreel and his brother called to order that they never thought Sam would ever find out about. As each passed by, Sam began to feel weaker and weaker. Soon what he was seeing didn’t even register. The scenes began to blur together, the ringing in Sam’s ears was turned up so loud it blocked out the one-sided conversations Dean kept having, and he felt himself completely shut down as his mind slipped into nothingness. He felt like he was nowhere. Not in his own mind, not back in the infirmary at the bunker, just nowhere.

But there _was_ a really annoying sensation on his face, like someone tapping over and over again in the same place, and eventually he realized that he could feel. He could feel something touching his skin. And there was a sound, it was a buzzing. Did he have cotton in his ears or…? No, wait okay, it wasn’t buzzing it was a prettier sound. It was a something he liked listening to like a song--No? That’s not right… what was it?

“Sam, sweetheart…?”

_The tapping again…. stop it._

“Hey, hey. C’mon, hon.”

“Step aside, Olivia.”

Liv did as she was told, though she didn’t go far from Sam who was draped across the medical chair out cold. It had only been about two minutes since Sam had told them to keep going because it was working but Sam had deteriorated so quickly Cas and Liv had hardly any time to make a judgment call with the spell and react accordingly.

Castiel laid his hand across Sam’s clammy forehead. Sam’s eyes were fluttering wildly.

“Can you fix him?”

Castiel grumbled an affirmative, but it was clear he was having to concentrate really hard in order to do so. A sigh of relief left Liv’s mouth.

_What a stupid risk._

A moment later, the fluttering of Sam’s eyes stopped, his chest rising and falling in a normal pattern that was close to peaceful. Cas removed his hands from the Winchester and stepped back to evaluate him. Liv appeared at his side.

“I’m not sure what happened,” Castiel explained. “Maybe I mixed the ingredients incorrectly, or perhaps I was delivering the chants the wrong way. It has been a very long time since I’ve read over such things.”

“It’s not your fault, Cas.”

“I put him to sleep so that the healing can set in and he can regain what strength he may have lost. I’m not sure how exactly the spell affected him but he should be okay in a couple of hours. Though, I doubt he’ll be happy to wake up to another failure.”

They glanced back to see the grace was no longer glowing in the bowl on the table.

“He said he knew the risks,” Liv muttered. “This was one of them.”

“Now that the grace has been used up, hopefully we can put this practice of nearly killing Sam to rest.” And with that, Castiel stormed out of the room, jerking the bowl of cooled mixture from the counter as he passed by. Liv was left blinking in surprise in the angel’s wake.

Then she turned back to the sleeping Sam and leaned over his pale face. She brushed his hair back and kissed his temple, sighing sadly at the realization that their last shot at restoring Sam’s memories had failed. A huge part of her had not wanted to risk it, but since Sam was pushing so hard for it anyway, she allowed a small part of herself to hope the outcome could be good. Now she regretted it because it stung to have to re-accept that this was how it was always going to be.

She felt exhausted at the idea of starting over. She would do it. It was better than losing Sam altogether. But, regardless, she had lost a large portion of him, and it was time to officially start mourning.

 

\--------

 

Liv hadn’t left the bunker in two days, since they returned from the warehouse and the double possession, so when Castiel came back down to the infirmary to check on Sam’s progress and found Liv with her legs curled up on the counter, leaning against the wall, reading a book next to the slumbering Sam, he suggested she do just that. There wasn’t a lot to do in Lebanon, Kansas so she found herself with her book at a coffee shop downtown. She ordered a cinnamon latte and took in the feeling of the mundane for a few hours. It was incredibly refreshing to do nothing but worry about her coffee cooling down as she read and having to ask the old man at the register if he wouldn’t mind popping it in the microwave to warm it up.

After she felt her mind had been satisfactorily cleared, Liv headed back to the bunker. It still struck her that the Impala wasn’t in its place even though she knew Dean was gone. He still hadn’t replied to her text messages. She still checked every few hours.

As she entered, she took a scan of the space from above and was surprised to see Sam sitting at the table below. At the sound of the door slamming, Sam jumped to his feet, his head snapping around to see her.

“Oh, hey!” she exclaimed, starting down the iron stairs. “I was sure if you woke Cas would call m--”

Before she even reached the last step, Sam wordlessly met her and grabbed her up in his arms, snatching her off the staircase like a child. She was so surprised by this since she hadn’t been this affectionate with Sam since she found out about the angel that she didn’t even react to Sam’s touch until she felt his lips on her neck travel up across her jaw to find her own lips. Then they were kissing, her body lifted and locked in his arms with her draped around his neck, hands in his hair, and she didn’t even really want to stop to ask exactly why this was happening.But she did anyways, pulling back to look at his face, and Sam’s eyes, so sincere and full of memories stared back at her.

Sam had never looked at Liv in quite this way. He knew the hollowness of recognizing her but not _knowing_ her. When that chunk of his life had been deleted and rearranged to look different he felt the a loss but couldn’t know what it was, he didn’t fully understand it, he just knew there was one. As she was in front of him for the first time since he regained those memories, everything fell into place. He didn’t feel the strange frustration in his molecules that told him his very being was fighting what his brain kept telling him was reality. The sight of her finally made sense to him. It reminded him of how lonely it felt to believe she was never part of his life. For once, his reality was actually better than what he allowed himself to hope for.

“It worked?” she breathed. He nodded, a stupidly happy smile breaking across his face as he pulled her back down to kiss her again and soon she was caught up just as she had been before.

“No, but... what happened?” Liv pulled herself away again, breathing heavily, but truly searching for answers. She slipped out of Sam’s arms and found her feet, but she didn’t back away. She stayed right in Sam’s personal space.

“Apparently, everything went as planned,” Sam shrugged. “It just happened a lot faster in my head than it felt like it did.”

“What do you mean? What happened to you?” Liv was kind of annoyed with the tone of her voice but it seemed concern was just the default for her now. “I mean, you looked like it really took a lot out of you?”

“Cas said that must have been the Trials.”

Liv clapped her hands on either side of her face in horror. _“We went back that far?”_

Amused, Sam shook his head as a sign that it was okay, pulling her in for a hug.

“We weren’t supposed to go back that far!” she whimpered, her voice muffled against his chest.

“I couldn’t break out of it to tell you guys when. Cas said he shut it down when I started really puttering out.” He rubbed her back soothingly. “But I’m fine, I really am. Whatever bits of the Trials’ healing we undid, Cas was able to nearly bring me back up to par this afternoon.”

Liv rested her chin on his chest to look into his face. “How far back did we go?”

“A few weeks after you moved in?”

“That--!” Liv sputter, pushing out of his arms. “That means the majority of the healing was undone!”

“Liv, I’m fine!”

“You shouldn’t be picking me up! You should be lying down and rest--”

“I’m rested!”

“Sam--”

“Look,” Sam grabbed her by the shoulders. “I saw a lot of things during that spell that I’m really going to have to think about. But right now, I don’t want to do that.”

Liv nodded, a pout forming.

“For the first time in months I am completely myself, I feel actual...like… happiness? And you’re here. And I _know_ you.” He grinned. “ _That’s_ what I want to focus on right now.”

Liv nodded again. She was really tired of worrying and who was she to argue if Sam said all he wanted to do was focus on her?  Sam dropped down to nuzzle the top of her head with his nose.

“Can we do that?” he whispered.

Liv nodded again, breathlessly.

“Cas is gone,” he added. “He figured we’d want some time alone.”

“Thoughtful of him,” Liv replied. Then she was effortlessly scooped back up into Sam’s arms and was being carried swiftly down the hall. She clung to him like he was a life raft, kissing every part of skin his gray undershirt would allow.

The huge complex was empty, but still Sam kicked the door shut, and the overwhelming space of the bunker that seemed to drown Liv in loneliness just a night before meant nothing now. Sam didn’t sprawl her out on his bed and descend on her. Instead he fell backward on his back with her in his arms draped across him. He felt her soft lips covering him in kisses as he ran his hands through her, tucking it behind her ear as they embraced, tracing the shaped of her back, and gripping her tightly against him.

He wanted to feel her warmth, he wanted feel her touch, he wanted to firmly grip the reality of that moment and know that every caress and every kiss from her meant that she loved him and that he could trust that. He could trust that. If the spell had done any good, it was that it had convinced him he was loved.

Liv fell from above Sam to his side, dragging him with her by keeping him in a deep kiss. When she broke away, they were laying eye to eye. She pulled herself closer so their foreheads touched. As she reached up to trace his beautiful face --the lines that made up his dumples, the sharp features of his jaw and cheekbones, the precious curve of his mouth as he smiled at her-- emotion overtook her. All she could slowly whisper was, “I want _you..._  I want _you_ …”

“I’m right here,” he breathed back, lifting up on his elbow to hover over her. “I’m right here.” He kissed her in between each time he said it, shushing her sweetly, his thumb wiping away stray tears.

Her arms wrapped around Sam’s rib cage as she slid herself underneath him. “I want you in control. I want to feel that it’s you.”

 

Every touch, every caress, every kiss, movement, sensation she had, she knew was Sam. And she knew it was because he wanted it, he chose it, he chose her. Only Sam was doing these things, and only he could.

 

 


	7. Epilogue

Liv sat with her arms crossed tightly against her chest, staring straight forward out the windshield of the Impala. Dean had both hands on the steering wheel while glowering at the road in front of him like it had personally offended him. The tension in the front seat made the air feel like it could be cut with a knife, but luckily there was no knife, because had there been one of them may have used it on the other. Neither was glad to be riding out to meet Garth’s strange, new were-family with the other, and yet here they were, just the two of them for the first time since Liv had clung to Dean’s jacket in a deserted parking lot and begged him not to abandon her.

Two weeks in the bunker without Dean had flown by (after the initial first three awful days, of course). Sam lingered in a slight melancholy for a few days while he recovered from the ‘backspace’ spell. Physically, Sam was managing and seemed to improve day to day, but emotionally, it was pretty obvious that he was struggling. The onslaught of revelations the spell had offered Sam rendered him pretty emotionally raw. Every so often Liv would catch him zoning out, clearly lost in thought. She could only guess that he was reliving and processing through some of the things the spell revealed to him about Dean.

Though he would insist that he was _fine_ whenever Liv checked in on him that first week, Sam still spent days in his sweatpants and a t-shirt and gave no indication that he wanted to leave the bunker for take-out, to find the next hunt, or for any other reason at all.  The good side of this was that Sam actually allowed Liv to take care of him without any objections. In fact, as broken up as he was about what he saw of Dean in the spell visions, he was even more emotional about being slammed with three years worth of Liv all at once that he thought was lost forever.

Liv couldn’t really imagine what it must have been like to have to deal with all the residual thoughts and feelings that kind of ordeal would bring on, but she didn’t ask many questions. She had never seen Sam so open and unguarded and she was afraid if she prodded even a little, he’d retreat back into himself. Kind of like a tiny bunny, except he was a giant man.

The melancholy also made Sam slightly clingy. He didn’t seem to want to be too far away from Liv no matter what they were doing. He sat on the same side of the table as her when they ate. He made sure to keep right in stride with her if they were moving through the bunker so he could hold her hand or place his lightly on the small of her back. He’d also started an unexpected-hug-habit, as though there were moments where he just needed to hold her and remind himself everything really had worked out in that situation. While they tag-teamed making dinner one night, Liv found herself wrapped up in one from behind while she stood at the stove, Sam’s stubble against her cheek as he hung over her shoulder, causing her to giggle and bring her hand up to his face. It made it difficult to finish her task so she did end up over-cooking the veggies just a bit. Neither of them minded.

Until Sam felt up for actually stepping out and working a case or continuing their search for Gadreel, they decided to get some more research about tracking angels done. A few hours in one night, Liv’s eyes were crossing. She grabbed the stack of books she had gone through and crossed the room to place them back on the bookshelf next to Sam, who was on his laptop in the squishy chair. As she replaced the last book, she glanced down to see Sam staring at the Google Maps screen.

“Planning a trip?” she asked, lightly.

Sam blinked out of his thoughts. “Uh,” he faltered, clicking out of the window. “No.” He closed his laptop and sat it aside. He didn’t look up at her.

She laid a hand on his shoulder. “I could...I can text him. It’s been days since I tried last--”

“No.” He shook his head. “We’re fine.”

“Okay,” she conceded, bringing her lips down to his forehead. She decided not to suggest contacting Dean again.

Liv felt his hands on her hips pulling her down into his lap. Sensing his need to hold her again, she let herself collapse across his legs as he wrapped her up in another surprise-hug. He leaned his head against her chest pitifully. She could almost feel his sadness like it hung on his skin. She brought her hand up to his hair, smoothing it back away from his face, stroking his cheek as his head rose and fell with her breathing. Soon she was rocking ever-so-slightly back and forth in the chair, kissing the top of his head, trying to sooth his melancholy. It was then that she realized his need wasn’t to hold her, but to be held.

Sam didn’t even pretend to go to his own room each night when it was time to sleep.  Or his own side of the bed for that matter. The nightmares he had were easier to manage when Liv was next to him as he woke. Some were about Kevin, a few were about the spell itself, then some were just about the actual truth about what had happened to him. But luckily, as the nights went on, his rest became more and more peaceful. By the time Castiel stopped in to check on Sam’s progress in the middle of the second week, he only had a nightmare maybe once a night. Sam could deal with that. The guilt he felt for things his hands had done when they were not his own would probably never let his subconscious go, completely.

_One nightmare a night is fair._

Castiel was glad to find there wasn’t much left that Sam needed healing, so after a quick tap on Sam’s forehead and a brief explanation of the mess of angel politics he was having to deal with, he disappeared. The last bit of healing felt like getting a second wind, so Sam decided it was time to get back out there and work a case and do some good. The two chased some leads to New Mexico together, dealing with a pretty standard vengeful spirits case. It had been an incredibly long time since they had worked a case just the two of them. It felt kind of awesome.

After picking up a strange report about a John Doe that turned out to be Garth on the police alerts, Liv and Sam headed to Wisconsin. Liv zipped up her high-waisted skirt and readjusted the bun she twisted her hair into as the looked into the hotel mirror. She caught Sam’s eye in the reflection as he threw his navy blazer on and straightened his tie.

“You ready for this?” he asked with a smirk.

“Yes, sir,” she replied. “But you know how much I hate posing as FBI agents when your hair is so out of dress code.” She playfully tossed the bottom of his hair up so it landed dramatically around his face.

“Stop it! It’s fine!” He batted her hand away then tucked his fluffy mane behind his ear.

“I could have come up with something better for you if we’d had more time.”

“Next time.”

“Like, I could be escorting Garth’s only living relative from county for a visit. We’d just need to get you a prison jumpsuit and fake tattoos and handcuffs--”

“Kinky.”

Liv rolled her eyes and popped him on the shoulder. “Then we could pull your hair into a gross, ratty, prison bun--”

“Uh, I don’t know about that--”

“Or you could be a researcher studying ritualistic animal sacrifices for a really boring book! We get you a sweater vest, a pair a glasses, a jacket with tweed elbow patches, and a huffy disposition--”

“You just described one of my law school professors.”

“Bet he didn’t have hair like yours, though.”

“Ha, _no_ ,” Sam snickered. “Why do you always end up back on the frumpy professor idea?”

“It’s not frumpy--”

“ _Sweater vest?_ ”

“It’s sexy!”

Sam’s face twisted comically into disbelief.

“Okay, I may have a ‘professor’ thing…”

Sam straightened his blazer and turned to the side, placing his hands in his pockets as if to pose. “Do you _not_ like me in the suit?” He raised his eyebrow, questioningly.

A smile broke across Liv’s face. They hadn’t been this playful in a long time. Sam was just so much _lighter_ than he’d been in months. “I didn’t say _that_ ,” she flirted.

“Because, I mean--” he gestured to himself with mock-confidence.

Liv grabbed him by the collar, with a laugh, and pulled him down into a kiss.

“So yes? You like the suit?” he said against her lips.

“Shut up.”

“Time to go?”

“Yessir.”

“Let’s roll.”

The receptionist at the hospital never even questioned Sam. It was his demeanor, the sense of control he seemed to have, the way he carried himself and spoke deliberately but politely. There was no hesitation to give them Garth’s room number. It went quite smoothly. In fact, considering how things had been going, the whole two weeks prior had gone pretty smoothly, too. Now they were working cases together and it felt like their old life, before Gadreel, before the Trials, before SucroCorp.

Then they walked into Garth’s room.

Standing over the hospital bed was an unsuspecting Dean.

The reactions of the three conscious people in that room involved in this unexpected reunion were each slightly different, but they did share one thing: discomfort. And after a sputtery, awkward few minutes, the rightful tension settled into the room. Sam recovered quickly, masking how _not ready_ he was to see his brother with an innocuous question about where he had driven in from. Dean’s answer was needlessly indifferent in tone, which set Liv off. It didn’t take much for her to stare daggers through Dean and soon Dean was staring them right back. She refused to say a word, knowing she had nothing nice to add, not even when Dean point-blank overemphasized his greeting to her.

“ _Liv,_ ” he forced, inclining his head at her.

She only glared back.

_He doesn’t call me that. He calls me O, and he’s the only one who does._

But she didn’t want to hear that name right then. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever want to hear it again.

Had it not been for the clear need Sam had to keep peace just to make it through this stressful encounter, Liv probably would have gone off on Dean much sooner than she ended up doing so. His betrayal stung worse and worse the longer she had to be around him. Every time he spoke, she heard his door slamming and the Impala peeling out of that parking lot. She probably could have kept a handle on her rage had it just been that Dean hurt her, but it wasn’t just that. She couldn’t help but notice the strain in Sam’s face, the tension that had instantly returned to his posture, as soon as Dean was there. So Liv was hypersensitive to every snarky inflection in Dean’s tone and every sarcastic comment directed at anything. In any other situation it may have seemed like nothing, but it was not nothing. Not to Liv.

She felt her claws about to be unleashed as she stood to the back of the hospital room and let the boys catch up. Dean made some disgusting “teen mom” joke at Sam’s expense about the angel grace without taking into consideration the reason Sam was in that position to begin with, and it was only by some miracle she didn’t let loose on him right then. Liv was even able to rein herself in after Dean said he had this case covered and tried to get them to leave town “for their own good.” She got a few quips in, but she did not raise her voice. They were most certainly not going to leave so Dean could feel like some kind of protective martyr, once again, for making decisions for somebody else (that was an example of the kind of thoughts Liv worked very hard not to say out loud).

No, it wasn’t until Sam and Liv caught Dean in a lie later that day that Liv finally took her self-imposed gag order down. She listened to Sam’s side of a phone call to Dean as she and he walked towards the hospital parking lot. It seemed Dean had gotten nothing as far as leads go. Just then Sam picked up his pace as he approached a parked ambulance and caught Dean red-handed on the other side of it holding a folder full of information about the case.

“Make, model, license plate?” Sam denounced. “ _Really_ Dean?”

Dean seemed surprised. “I told you,” he countered. “We can’t hunt together. It’s for your own--”

“I’m gonna stop you right there!” Liv interjected, stepping up to Dean. “Can there just be a general rule from now on that states lying to someone ‘for their own good’ is not the way to go? In fact, I think it’s how we got here.”

“You stay outta this--”

“Fuck you, Dean!” The claws were out.

“Look, I know you hate me! I get it!”

“I don’t think you do!”

“Guys!” Sam’s voice boomed. “We’re not here to do this! We’re working this case.” He turned to Dean, his finger pointed directly at his brother’s face. “We’re not going anywhere. Let’s just find Garth, then we can go our separate ways.” Liv took in a deep breath and nodded. Sam took the file from Dean’s hands and wordlessly lead the way back to Liv’s car, leaving Dean standing alone, empty-handed on the pavement.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” she muttered, once they got in the car.

“Don’t be,” Sam replied. He didn’t look over at her. “None of this is your fault.”

After that showdown in the parking lot, Liv could never have guessed that she’d eventually be riding solo with Dean in the front seat of the Impala a mere day later. She especially couldn’t have guessed it would come to pass by her own suggestion. But after they found Garth, he begged the Winchesters to come out to see his family of wolves to prove they weren’t the same as other monsters so Dean agreed, citing that that would give Sam and Liv time to go down to meet with the sheriff. Something about that didn’t feel right to Liv.

As the three of them left Garth’s, Liv turned to Dean and simply said, “I’m coming with you, tomorrow.”

“No!” Dean sputtered. “I don’t need-- you’ll just get in the way!”

“Of what? Praying?” Liv crossed her arms, sardonically. “I’m coming with you.”

_“Why?”_

“You’re a liar and we need to make sure you aren’t trying to shrug us off this case again, so one of us should go with you. Sam doesn’t want to be near you right now, so I’m coming.” Dean’s eyes moved to Sam. Sam didn’t falter or look away. He stared right back at him. Liv continued, “I can either tail you like a stalker, or I can just ride in your front seat and we can act like normal adults and cut the bullshit. What do you say?” Dean’s eyes jumped between the two of them angrily before he finally conceded with a groan.

It was Dean who broke the unbearable silence on the car ride to Garth’s the next day. Liv wasn’t sure if he just really wanted to say what he said, or if he just couldn’t deal with the silence and growing tension any longer.

“For the record,” Dean started, side-eyeing Liv haughtily. “I wasn’t trying to shrug you guys off the case last night.”

“Well, you’ll forgive us for not trusting you.”

“What do you want from me, Olivia!”

“I told you what I wanted from you before you sped away from that warehouse! You already know!”

“I _had_ to leave!”

“The fuck you did…”

“I left to protect you and Sam,” he growled.

“Keep telling yourself that, pumpkin, but that’s bullshit and you know it. You left to protect yourself. So _you_ wouldn’t have to deal with the aftermath of _your_ mistakes!” Dean’s face turned to stone. Liv went on. She didn’t care if he listened or not. It never mattered, anyways. “Don’t act like my demands are cryptic and mysterious. I told you flat-out what I needed from you, what Sam needed from you, and you slammed the Impala door in my face. You chose what was best for you, not anyone else.”

Liv was shaking as they turned down a dirt road. She could hear Dean’s uneasy breathing as he tried to get a hold of his rage. A tall wooden house could be seen just up the way. They were nearly there.

The two weeks prior had gone smoothly, but that was obviously over now. Liv glanced at Dean as he put the Impala in park. He glowered down at her as though he was the one who had been betrayed, then he flung his door open and stormed towards the house. Liv blinked back one treacherous tear before pulling herself out of the Impala to follow him. It was time to get back to reality, and it wasn’t going to be easy.

 

 


End file.
